part one: the man of her dreams

      The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

      My son comes to my wedding.

      He’s my best man. That’s what I tell him. ‘You’re my best man, Pat.’ He looks pleased. He has never been a best man before. Not that he makes a smirking speech about what I got up to with sheep during my wild youth, or tries to get off with the bridesmaid, or even gets to look after the rings. He’s only six years old.

      So Pat’s best man duties are largely ceremonial. But I mean it when I tell him that he is my best man.

      He’s the best of me, my son, and this special day would feel hollow if he wasn’t here.

       In a few days’ time, when the wedding cake has gone and the new married life has begun, and the world starts getting back to normal, some teacher will ask Pat what he did at the weekend.

      ‘I went to my dad’s wedding,’ he will say.

       And although he doesn’t tell me any more than that, I can guess at the knowing laughter that unguarded, innocent remark, endlessly replayed, will cause in the staff room. How they will chuckle. How they will sigh. A sign of the times, my son’s teachers will think. Children spending the weekend watching one of their parents get spliced. What a world, eh?

      I know that my father would have felt the same way, although the old man wouldn’t have found it remotely funny.

      Even in his last years, when he was finally becoming resigned to what modern men and women do to their lives, and to the lives of their children, I know that my dad really wouldn’t have wanted his grandson to spend his Saturday afternoon watching me get married. A nice kickabout in the park would have been all the excitement he needed.

      But I think they are all wrong – my son’s teachers, my father, anyone who thinks that the first time should be considered more special than the last time.

      Placing no other above thee…

      What can be bad about placing no other above thee? How can another try at getting it right ever be wrong? Unless you’re Elizabeth Taylor.

      As the years pass, and