The Wedding Night by Harriet Walker (story reading txt) 📕

The Wedding Night is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 by Harriet Walker

Book club guide copyright © 2021 by Penguin Random House LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Random House Book Club and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Walker, Harriet, author.

Title: The wedding night: a novel / Harriet Walker.

Description: New York: Ballantine Books, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020046005 (print) | LCCN 2020046006 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984820020 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781984820013 (ebook)

Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PR6123.A426 W43 2021 (print) | LCC PR6123.A426 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046005

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046006

Ebook ISBN 9781984820013

randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Julianna Lee

Cover photograph: Getty Images/dancurko

ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Cast of Characters

The Week Before

Chapter 1: Effie

Chapter 2: Anna

A Week Later

Chapter 3: Effie

Chapter 4: Anna

Chapter 5: Effie

Chapter 6: Lizzie

Chapter 7: Anna

Chapter 8: Effie

Chapter 9: Anna

Chapter 10: Lizzie

The Morning After

Chapter 11: Effie

Chapter 12: Anna

Chapter 13: Effie

Chapter 14: Anna

Chapter 15: Effie

Chapter 16: Eighteen Months Earlier: Lizzie

Chapter 17: Effie

Chapter 18: Anna

Chapter 19: Effie

Chapter 20: Anna

Chapter 21: Eighteen Months Ago: Lizzie

Chapter 22: Effie

Two Days After

Chapter 23: Anna

Chapter 24: Effie

Chapter 25: Anna

Chapter 26: Six Months Earlier: Lizzie

Chapter 27: Effie

Chapter 28: Anna

Three Days After

Chapter 29: Effie

Chapter 30: Lizzie

Chapter 31: Anna

Chapter 32: The Wedding Night: Lizzie

Chapter 33: Effie

Chapter 34: Anna

Chapter 35: Effie

Chapter 36: Lizzie

Four Days After

Chapter 37: Effie

Chapter 38: The Wedding Night: Anna

Chapter 39: Six Months Earlier: Lizzie

Chapter 40: Effie

Chapter 41: Lizzie

Chapter 42: Effie

Chapter 43: Lizzie

Chapter 44: Effie

Chapter 45: Anna

Chapter 46: Lizzie

Chapter 47: Effie

Chapter 48: Lizzie

Chapter 49: Anna

Chapter 50: Effie

Chapter 51: Lizzie

Chapter 52: Anna

Chapter 53: Lizzie

Chapter 54: Effie

Chapter 55: Anna

Chapter 56: Effie

Chapter 57: Effie

Chapter 58: Anna

Chapter 59: Effie

Chapter 60: Anna

Chapter 61: Effie

Dedication

Acknowledgments

A Book Club Guide

By Harriet Walker

About the Author

At the still point of the turning world…there the dance is,

…Where past and future are gathered.

—T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

Cast of Characters

The Bride, Lizzie

The Groom, Dan

Ben, Dan’s Best Man

The Bridal Party:

Effie and Anna, Lizzie’s Best Women

Steve

Charlie

Iso

Bertie

The Week Before

From: Lizzie & Dan <[email protected]>

To: Effie Talbot, Anna & Steve Watson, Ben Holyoake, Charlie Bishop, <[email protected]>

Subject: Some news

Hi guys,

There’s no easy way to say this, but the two of us have come to a decision that we think is best for us both.

We won’t be getting married next week. Or ever, in fact.

We’re so sorry, we know you all have your flights booked, but hopefully you can appreciate we haven’t taken this step lightly.

We’ll be in touch with you all soon. For now, we need a bit of space.

Love,

Lizzie and Dan

1. Effie

Effie read the email again and looked down at her fingertips on the computer keyboard in front of her. They were pale and chewed, nails as red-rimmed as her eyes.

Un-fucking-believable. She had been looking forward to that holiday for months.

When Lizzie—happy, carefree, in-love-with-love Lizzie, lit from within by the sort of glow that comes only from the joy of somebody having weighed you in the balance and decided that, yes, they would like to spend the rest of their existence by your side—had first mentioned her plan to get married abroad, Effie had made all the right impressed, positive noises.

In fact, she had never seen the point of marrying in another country neither of you were from when your own had more than enough venues and your guests all lived in it. Lizzie even came from the sort of commuter belt family for whom home is a village with a Norman church tucked away for the precise purpose of rendering its prodigal City-worker daughters Elizabeth Bennet for a day.

Supposing the couple didn’t fancy that option, there were plenty of municipal buildings near where they lived in London to choose from. Proud borough town halls built in civic red brick that would appear nice enough in the background of the photos as long as you positioned someone in front of the fire escape signs. Deliberately derelict warehouses and deconsecrated chapels gone just enough to rack and ruin to look good on Instagram but not to pose any real health and safety risks, beyond an enduring chill that storage heaters would never quite take the edge off. Wood-paneled rooms upstairs in pubs, where the groomsmen could nip down to catch the football highlights between the speeches.

Or conference suites in five-star hotels that rich tourists paid to stay in and Londoners only ever went to on somebody else’s money, full of regimented chairs with covers that slipped over them to guard against the worst of the stains. Were the covers, Effie wondered, lined with something waterproof? Otherwise, what was the point in providing two different layers of fabric for the inevitable nuptial spillages of red wine, gravy, and stomach acid to soak into?

Effie noted that nobody who got married abroad ever seemed to do it in a climate colder than their own. It was always in a château, a trullo, or a vineyard located in some hot-blooded country, in the hope that the terroir would imbue the pallid Celts who booked them with the same body and top notes—zest, even!—it did the grapes it nurtured.

No, when the time came, Effie had always presumed she would do what most people seemed to: book a registry office, where tidy men and women in bank manager suits presided over efficient, non-Latinate words exchanged between couples who filed in and out on the hour like cuckoos from a clock.

Of course, for this to be any sort of viable option, Effie needed somebody who was interested