And I said, “Almost.”
And I smiled at her, and I have been told since by my sister-in-law Roisin that the smile was, in her words, “not right.”
At ten past two, Sylvan Doole’s van came up the lane.
He got out, walked over, and said — loudly, because he is a loud man and because I had asked him to check with me on arrival —
“Mrs Halloran? I’ve got the marquee lads at Fentiman Row and they’re nearly up. Do you want to head over about four?”
There was a silence in that yard.
And Solange said, “Fentiman Row?”
And I said, “Yes. It’s at yours this year.”
I want to describe the next four minutes because they were the best four minutes of my adult life and I am not going to be modest about it.
She said, “At mine?”
I said, “There’s a marquee going up on your lawn. Sylvan’s doing the food. There’s a bar, there’s chairs for twenty-one, there’s a loo out the back so nobody’s queuing, and Ailish is coming Monday morning to put it all back.”
