‘It’s from me and Hugh,’ I say. ‘And Ollie,’ I force myself to push out. He didn’t donate a thing, but she’ll know that.

  Her trembling hands go to her face as tears fill her eyes.

  Andy’s friends’ wedding is in Edinburgh at a private estate house of previous nobility, a stunning stately home from the sixteenth century that has been added to and renovated over the centuries. The actual ceremony is in a sixteenth-century chapel in the grounds, but we have use of one room in the grand house: the champagne reception takes place in the drawing room that looks out over a long lawn and the magnificent manicured gardens, which is where I long to be. Later, we’ll move on to a marquee for the reception.

  I’m nervous about this day from the moment Andy asks me to be his plus one. We’ve been together for five months and I have so far managed to avoid meeting his friends. Between getting to know each other, weekend trips home to check on Lily, weekend trips home for him, and work, we have so far made this relationship just about us, which is what I prefer. We’re stepping it up a level, I can feel it, and I don’t know if I can do it. I’m afraid of him seeing my true colours. I invented as many excuses as I could think of to get me out of this, from having to work, to visiting Lily; but he’s not stupid, he could tell I was doing everything I could to not come. Eventually I made an adult decision. If I want this relationship to survive, which I do, then I need to make an effort and take this trip.

  He’s aware of my often neurotic behaviour. He’s seen what I’m like on trains, in restaurants, and cafés, how choosy I am about where to sit, how I want to avoid certain negative vibes at tables and how I’m pulled to another table, asking the waiter if we can move, trying one place before moving to another, and that’s okay with him because he’s particular about things too. He prefers to see the door in every room, he hates having his back to it. He won’t sleep if a wardrobe door is left open so much as an inch, and if he doesn’t have an eye mask, he can’t sleep without total darkness. We both have our quirks, and we accept them, but he does not know what I’m like at a wedding. Particularly a wedding being held in a marquee on the grounds of a field that was once a battlefield.

  The sadness hits me as soon as I step out of the car. It is the saddest field I have ever walked on. He mistakes my freezing in place for a pause to take in the glamorous surroundings.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  The reason I’ve driven is because I don’t drink, which means we don’t have to take the organised coach with all the other guests and be carted around together like we’re schoolchildren, or even worse, cattle.

  ‘You’re just a control freak,’ he’d said when I insisted on renting a car. ‘You can’t have it your way all the time.’ His tone was teasing but he meant it, and he was right. I am a control freak, I have to control what I can control, because the alternative is terrifying.

  ‘I’m not a sheep,’ I tell him.

  No, he does not know the reaction I will have when I set foot on the ground where so many men were slaughtered, when my roots connect with these roots and they start speaking to each other, whispering in hushed voices in condolence and fear, fear that they’ll come back, that it’ll happen again. I feel a whirl of dizziness, nausea, panic, anxiety, anger. A surge of bravery and courage. I feel feisty, ready to fight. Ready to charge at someone and swing an axe, ready to take off their heads. Not an ideal mood to be in to meet Andy’s friends for the first time.

  ‘Where’s the chapel?’ I ask, looking around.

  ‘Invitation just said to meet at the main car park,’ he says, barely looking at me, watching the people around us. ‘Do you think you need to wear your sunglasses today?’ he asks gently. ‘It’s quite overcast.’

  The overcast days are worse, because people’s lights are stronger, but he knows I don’t wear them for sunlight, he thinks it has something to do with migraines. His comment hurts me. He’s ashamed of me. Faced with his people, he wants me to be someone else.

  Andy looks nervous when he introduces me to the stream of couples that we encounter. He knows that I hate touching people, he thinks it’s an issue I have with germs, but I’m wearing gloves, built into the Audrey Hepburn evening look I’ve deliberately created, so I can shake as many hands as he wants me to but I pull away from their hugs and air kisses. There’s no need for that level of closeness with people I’ve never met before.

  When a coach arrives to take us to the chapel, which is somewhere in the grounds, Andy looks at me and grins. ‘Baaa.’

  We pile on the coach, in our finery, most men in kilts, women in high shoes they struggle to walk in on the loose stones in the car park, and pretty dresses. A concoction of complex characters, swirling and mixing, like the aftershave and perfumes, some that complement, others that clash.

  It’s pretty to look at but not to sit in. The battlefield ground is sad and fiery, the people are excited and anxious, and so I sit on the coach battling the feelings of anger, fight, anxiety and excitement. Oh how I’d love to draw my shield.

  I hate how Andy’s personality has changed almost instantly. We sit on the bus with the ghosts of Andy’s past, as they behave like a bunch of naughty school kids, listening to childish jokes and overexcited retorts and insults flying up and down the coach. It’s like he’s back in school. He already had a few drinks while we were getting ready at the B&B; he’s on holiday, he has a right to let loose, but it’s new to see Andy behaving like this. I’m not the only person who becomes a different person in the company of others.

  In the chapel the love in the room is enough to make me relax. The amount of red and pink throbbing energies being sent in all directions makes me want to sidle up to everyone I avoided on the bus. Of course there is sadness too – even when people are happy they can feel sad – and there is regret and bitterness being shared between couples as they witness a union that reminds them of the unreached potential of theirs, but the overwhelming, predominant energy in the room is love. I take off my sunglasses and hold Andy’s hand, watch the aurora borealis of love energies swishing, a celestial ballet of light in the rotunda.

  Andy steps up to the altar to do his reading and a surge of neon red shoots towards him from behind me. I turn around to see where it’s coming from, but I can’t see the source in the packed congregation. I can’t concentrate on Andy’s reading, my heart pounds so loudly in my ears, as the red shoots towards him like laser beams. They travel to Andy’s magnetic field and they swivel around before disappearing. Colours seem to disintegrate as soon as they hit his bio-field. I don’t know if he accepts them or if he throws them back. I have no idea what he does with the energies he receives and those he manufactures himself. He looks out to the congregation as he reads, and I want to know who in the room loves him so fiercely and intensely that causes their love to fire from them like from a cannon. My heart is hammering, angrily, wildly at the insult, the danger, of somebody somewhere wanting something of mine.

  We mingle at the champagne reception. Ask after a lot of children and people from the past that I haven’t heard of, feeling very much like a spare tyre stored in the boot, being carried around everywhere with Andy but really only required for moments that his conversation is punctured or goes flat and requires rescuing. I tune out of most conversations, looking around for the source of the violent laserbeam love.

  I excuse myself from a conversation with another nice couple to go to the toilet but instead I follow the call of the majestic gardens, breathing in the calm and blowing out the stress. I take my time examining each of the flowers and plants, reading the names of the trees. I’m in a state of heightened bliss when I hear my name being called.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Andy asks, his eyes bloodshot, his tie crooked. ‘I’ve been looking for you for the past half an hour. Everyone’s sitting at the table, waiting for you. I feel like a knob.’ I’ve never quite seen him such a ball of rage. I don’t need colours to tell me that.

  ‘Sorry. I just wanted to look.’

  ‘You could have told me and I would’ve joined you. Is everything okay?’ he asks in an irritated way that doesn’t welcome an honest heart-pouring response. Plus he’s obviously had a few too many drinks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say tightly, needing his help but unable to ask for it. ‘I’m just not that great with people.’

  ‘Well try then,’ he says, walking away back to the reception.

  My heart is heavy. I look down at the pink rose and wish I could draw its colour. I don’t want to pluck it from the bush, end its life, take away its beautiful energy colours, but it’s the pink that I want. I hold it in my hands, attached to the stem, and I imagine I’m pulling it around me like a veil, for everything to literally be rosy and rose-tinted.

  His feet crunch over the stones as he makes his way back to me. There’s anger in his steps.

  ‘What the …?’ he’s about to explode and then suddenly backs down, melts a little. He lets go of the pent up energy, his shoulders visibly drop as he takes me in. ‘You look so beautiful.’

  I smile, surprised.

  He wraps his arms around me and hides his nose in my neck and kisses me.

  I grin as I twirl the stem of the pink rose between my fingers.

  ‘As you can see, this is a magnet,’ Mr Walker explains in science class. ‘You all have one in front of you. Magnets are solid objects of stone, metal – Alex, get it away from your braces – or other material, which have the property of attracting iron-containing materials. This attracting property is either natural or induced, which means formed by unnatural means.’

  ‘Just like how Eddie was conceived, sir.’

  ‘All objects are made up of tiny particles called – what?’

  ‘Herpes, sir.’

  ‘Atoms. Atoms are composed of several different particles including tiny negatively charged electrons that rotate around the – what?’

  ‘Anus, sir.’

  ‘Atom nucleus,’ Mr Walker says, continuing as if he’s not been heckled by almost everyone in the class. ‘The electrons in the atoms of magnetic objects are nearly all spinning in the same direction around the nucleus. This is what causes an object to be magnetic. In each magnetic object there are many different groups of atoms, each forming its own mini-magnet, but these groups are in opposing directions to each other. In a magnet, these groups of atoms are aligned so that the mini-magnets are all pointing in the same direction. The term for this is – what?’

  ‘Homosexuality, sir.’

  ‘Polarity. All magnets have both a north and south pole. Opposite poles attract one another, same poles repel one another. This means if the north pole of a magnet faces the south pole of another magnet, they stick together, or attract.’

  ‘Like a sixty-nine, sir.’

  ‘However, if you hold the north pole of a magnet to the north pole of another magnet, they push away from, or repel each other.’

  ‘Like Eddie’s parents, sir.’

  ‘As you can see, each of you has a collection of materials on the table in front of you. Experiment with the magnet – no, not on your nose ring, Jennifer, use it on the items in the basket – and tell me which materials stick to the magnet.’

  Noise breaks out the minute he stops talking, and he sits at his desk, arms folded as he watches the groups of two to each table dive into their shared baskets. I sit beside Gospel, and he gets to work.

  I hold the south pole to the north pole and feel their power push them apart, away from each other, this invisible strength that won’t allow them to join together. I do it over and over. I like watching the invisible power.

  Suddenly Mr Walker is beside me.

  ‘That’s the magnetic field; the space around an electrical current or magnet in which the magnetic force is felt.’

  ‘Can it happen with people?’

  ‘Not unless you’re Ironman, no. Richard, get out of the class.’

  ‘Ah but, sir—’

  ‘Out. I saw you.’

  I keep pushing the two magnets together and they wobble against my strength but win each time and push apart. There’s something familiar about how their repelling against each other feels. No matter what Mr Walker says, I’m no Ironman but I’ve had that feeling with people.

  We find our seating through Michael and Lisa’s Periodic Table of Seating. Our initials are in the middle, the table number is on top and our full names are below. I dread the thought of not being seated beside Andy, but maybe it’s for the best, given the mood he’s currently in. I could have guessed who the person sending the love hearts to Andy was without seeing her colours. I could have guessed by the repelling feeling I have whenever I have been in her company. Working my way around the champagne reception I’d suddenly get the sensation that I was being pushed away and there she’d be. My body doesn’t want me to be near her. And if you’d asked me who I’d least prefer to sit at a table with, of any of the three hundred strangers in the entire room, I would have chosen her, which makes me laugh when we approach the table and there she is. Sitting pretty.

  AK, Alice Kelly, is at table 14 of thirty. There are ten on each table. The flowers in the centre of the tables are held in test tubes. It’s traditional seating and so Andy and I are not seated together, I’m between a Hamish and a Scott. My head is whirling, everyone is drunk now and I’ve had enough unwanted sloppy kisses on the cheek and spit flying into my eyeball to last me a lifetime. Andy is spinning, starting to get messy; he needs to soak up the drink with food. I pass him the bread. He offers me wine.

  Hamish, my sweet partner to my right, works in environmental science, has a boat and spends his summers cruising and his winters competing. He and his wife Anna, on the opposite side of the circular table, have grown-up children who he says don’t love them anymore, apart from when they need money and want their clothes washed.

  Scott, to the left of me, is so inebriated he keeps spitting in my eye, in my food, in my water glass, and repeating the same questions about what it is that I do, while his wife Rachel watches Andy. She has calmed her declarations now that she’s sitting at the same table as him; she sends out marshmallow-pink puffs like she’s sending smoke signals, the transmittance of her love for him. She thinks nobody at the table notices the way she ignores her husband and focuses all her attention on Andy. But I notice.

  I can’t tell if he is responsive to her signals because I can’t see his energies and this has never infuriated me more than this moment. I study him for secret smiles, tell-tale eyes, but after only five months together I’m still figuring him out, still learning how to speak human. Rachel barely glances at her husband and when she does it’s not flattering.

  If she picks up on the vibes I’m sending her way, then she’s not reacting. In one way I think she’d have to be stupid not to sense my feelings for her, but then on the other hand I don’t know how she can feel anything through her own insulated layer of love and lust for Andy. Fed up with making an effort with these people, I give in and my shield goes up. I sit back, fold my arms and let the circus play on around me. And on and on it goes. If I thought there’d be a chance of him sobering up over dinner, I was incredibly naïve. He cranks it up to eleven. The messier he becomes, the prissier I seem to become. Prickly and judgemental, even with my shield up and my aura sealed. Still, she sends out her energies, all to him, and I can’t do anything to stop them. All I can do is wonder, is he taking them from her, wrapping his drunken hands around them? Are they making him remember her, remember them as a couple? When he pulls me up to dance, so touchy-feely, groping me in ways he wouldn’t usually in public, I wonder if it’s her lust that is making him so tactile.

  I feel like a limpet stuck to a rock, clamping tighter the more he spins me and wriggles ridiculously against me. I’m rigid while everyone around me is fluid. Their heads are elsewhere, in some trippy happy place with butterflies and unicorns, while I’m here seeing everything exactly as it is. I can’t be swept along on their magical ride of silliness because I can see the strings on the puppet, I knew the rabbit was already in the hat. The dance floor becomes packed and I sneak off.

  I move away from the marquee and the fairy lights to the darkness, listening to the swish of the trees and allowing the breeze to sweep the heat from my flushed face. At last I can finally be alone.

  Back in the B&B I sit in the corner of the bedroom, legs tucked up against my body, wearing pyjamas, make-up already off. He’s pacing and flailing around like he’s made of rubber. We’re having an almighty row and I’m being told all the terrible things that I am. I am cold. I ignored his friends. I didn’t dance. I kept disappearing. I’m so distant.

  His accent is stronger than I’ve ever heard it, surrounded by his people, and whisky. He’s slurring so badly I can just about make out his prime points.

  ‘You wouldn’t even shake Jamie’s hand. Jamie was in my chemistry class,’ he says unnecessarily. ‘He wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

  ‘You know I don’t like touching people,’ I say quietly. I hate talking about it, I don’t want to talk about it.

  ‘You don’t like touching me,’ he says suddenly.

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘You won’t hold my hand. You won’t even fucking …’ he slurs as he goes into an inaudible slew of my failures. ‘Look, you have your reasons,’ he says, suddenly with clarity of thought and surprising respect. ‘But these are my friends, you can trust them, you don’t have to look down on them …’

  ‘I wasn’t looking down at them.’

  ‘Oh yes you were, all snooty, while—’

  ‘While you and Rachel were drooling all over each other.’

  He stops. ‘What?’

  ‘If I was going to make you sit at a table with an ex, I would tell you. I would. In fact I told you about Gospel before we met him, just so you’d know, and I probably shouldn’t have told you because now you won’t see him again.’ I’d never make him spend the entire night guessing, feeling in the way, like a spare part and a second thought.

  He looks dizzy and confused. Opens his mouth and closes it again. ‘Who?’