‘Exactly.’ Kylie’s colour was almost beetroot as she desperately tried to explain herself. ‘It was bad enough when I was skinny, but now I’ll look like a wall of cupids coming down the aisle, with a sea of pink tulle coming after.’ She turned to Guy. ‘They say in the fashion magazines that you can perform miracles. Get me out of cupids and pink tulle. Please.’

There was a deathly hush.

‘We can’t,’ Jenny said at last. ‘Kylie, the dresses are finished. There’s less than a week to your wedding, and we have another enormous wedding to cater for on Christmas Day.’

The passion went out of Kylie like air out of a pricked balloon, and defeat took its place in an instant. She’d expected this, Guy thought. Her request had been one last stand, but defeat had been expected.

‘That’ll be for someone rich, I’ll bet,’ Kylie said, but it wasn’t said in anger. It was said as a fact, and there was a wealth of resignation in her voice. ‘Someone who can afford any wedding she wants and who has enough guts to stand up for it.’

Guy looked suddenly at the girl’s hands. They were scrubbed almost raw. There were jagged scars on two fingers.

‘You work in a butcher’s shop, Kylie?’ he asked her, and Kylie bit her lip.

‘Yeah. Morris’s butchers next door. That’s why I could come so quickly. But I should be back there now.’

‘You’ll work there after you’re married?’

‘Course I will,’ she said. ‘It’s Daryl’s dad’s shop, and there’s no way we can afford for me to stay home. We’re having a week’s honeymoon staying at Daryl’s auntie’s place. I’ll have another week off when the baby’s born. Then we’ll set up a cot in the back.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. It was dumb to ask. I gotta get back.’

She sounded totally resigned, Guy thought. Accepting.

Jenny was watching him.

What had Kylie said when she first arrived? They say in the fashion magazines that you can perform miracles.

He couldn’t perform miracles. Of course he couldn’t. But…