Magnolia Square by Margaret Pemberton

paintin’ the bloomin’ Sistine
Chapel!’
    Daniel took the photograph. Charlie swung Matthew down to the ground, and Carrie released her hold on Luke. With Matthew grasping tight hold of Leon’s hand, Luke holding on to
Kate’s, Daisy in front of them and Carrie to one side of them, another photograph was laboriously taken. Then Daniel wanted to take a photograph of Kate and her father. And then one of Kate
and Carrie and Daisy.
    ‘Hey up,’ Charlie said in a whispered aside to Harriet, his eyes not on the happy couple but on the exceedingly flash car he had just spied parked at the top end of the Square, and
on the elderly, bulldog-jawed, expensively suited figure standing beside it, ‘but I fink Kate’s got trouble, ’Arriet.’
    Harriet turned her head, saw what he had seen, and sucked her breath in sharply.
    ‘Do you fink I should ’ave a word with ’im?’ Charlie asked, deeply troubled. ‘Do you fink I should tell ’im it will spoil ’er day if she sees him
standin’ there, watchin’?’
    Harriet immediately laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘No, Charlie. It would only make matters worse. With a little luck, he’ll have gone by the time Daniel has finished taking
photographs.’
    Charlie looked towards the menacing figure of old Joss Harvey, of Harvey Construction Ltd, the man who was little Matthew’s paternal great-grandfather, and hoped she was right. And if she
wasn’t? What could he, or anyone else, do about it? Old man Harvey was little Matthew’s great-grandfather. He had as much right taking a look at Matthew’s mother on her wedding
day, as anyone else. But Kate wouldn’t want him there. Not after all the trouble he had caused her. Not after he had tried to take Matthew away from her.
    ‘For the Lord’s sake, Daniel, ’ave done with the photos and let’s throw the confetti!’ Miriam called out, voicing her own, and everyone else’s,
impatience.
    With difficulty, Charlie and Harriet returned their attention to the bride and groom. Carrie’s daughter, Rose, presented Kate with a lucky horseshoe. Billy Lomax attempted to present her
with a handful of coal so sooty that his hands and face were already as streaked as a miner’s, and he was only prevented from doing so by being speedily hauled away by his grandmother.
    ‘Yer stupid little bugger!’ Miriam said irately as his cargo scattered far and wide. ‘Yer supposed to give the bride a small piece of coal for luck, not half drown ’er in
a ton of nutty slack!’
    At last, to everyone’s satisfaction, the bride and groom prepared to make a run for it through a traditional shower of confetti.
    ‘But first the bouquet!’ Pru Sharkey called out, much to her mother’s consternation and her father’s visible displeasure.
    ‘Throw it this way, luv,’ Nellie Miller shouted gamely. ‘I could do with anuvver ’usband, just as long as ’e’s an improvement on the last one!’
    Amid shouts of encouragement and laughter, Kate tossed her bouquet high and in Pru’s direction. With pink-cheeked eagerness Pru jumped high, catching it adroitly.
    There was a storm of cheers, and Daniel could be heard demanding cheekily, ‘So who’s the lucky man going to be, Pru?’
    ‘I don’t suppose she knows,’ Miriam said in an undertone to Hettie, ‘just as long as it ain’t the insurance man!’
    Kate’s fingers intertwined tightly with Leon’s. Their reception was going to take place in the church hall, and for every step of the way they would be bombarded with confetti and
flower petals. It was a moment so perfect, so joyous, she felt as if her heart would burst.
    ‘Ready?’ Leon asked, his smile of happiness nearly splitting his face.
    ‘Yes,’ she said and then, as their friends and neighbours lined the church path, she looked over their milling heads and saw the car and the figure beside it.
    Her face froze. The car was a Bentley, and only one Bentley had ever nosed into Magnolia Square. When it had done so, four