As I slipped the dress over my shoulders for my aunt to check the fit, I revelled in the feel of my mother’s presence and reflected that Tim’s dress shopping advice hadn’t been such a waste of time after all.
‘Noah, we need to talk,’ I said the next afternoon, confiscating a whole bag of lollies he was using to make wedding favours. He’d already scoffed most of them anyway. Without a moment’s hesitation, he shoved the rest of the little gift boxes across the table to Tim and then got up to follow me. Tim checked to see that none of his other army friends were watching before resigning himself to finishing the ridiculous task of filling the boxes with jelly beans.
The river giggled at us as Noah and I settled down on our favourite rocks a few minutes later, trying to remember how we used
