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the spell. There was a nagging fear that Luke might
     say something that would shed a drop of poison into the one thing I held dear. That he
     might have balked at my marrying her after we’d been together such a short time –
     that he might even caution me against it. When Lauren and I are together, the love
     between us seems ancient and solid, but while I was talking to Luke, it felt fragile and
     bare.
    ‘It would be nice to meet her some
     day,’ Luke said. He sounded agitated. ‘And the wedding – it’s in
     Nairobi, I take it?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    ‘You know I
     won’t make it. Not at such short notice.’ The noise of voices and music grew
     in the background. He must have been making his way back closer to where the party was,
     keeping an eye on it.
    ‘It sounds like you’re
     celebrating yourself,’ I said.
    ‘A little shindig here. Nothing to top
     a wedding.’
    My brother could be the life and soul of the
     party, and there had been many times when I’d heard his school pals laugh at his
     jokes when they came back to our house after school. Their playful banter was not for
     me, though – as the younger brother I was excluded, watching from a distance or
     overhearing what he shared with an inner circle that had not included me since
     we’d left Nairobi.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
     ‘We didn’t decide to get married until a few days ago. It’s kind of a
     spontaneous thing.’
    Whatever script I had planned was faltering.
     My words petered out.
    ‘Spontaneous,’ Luke repeated. I
     imagined him shaking his head.
    ‘No invitations, nothing like
     that,’ I said. It wasn’t supposed to be a party. It was just me and Lauren,
     and a couple of friends, simple and low-key. None of Lauren’s family was coming
     over either. She’d made the call to them and received the kind of stunned response
     she’d expected. But we’d kept our promise to one another: create as little
     fuss as possible. I wanted our marriage to be an intimate affair, not like Luke and
     Julia’s society wedding, which had made the Sunday supplements and glossy
     magazines, but once Karl had got wind of our plans, he had told others. Before we knew
     it, a party had been planned, with a venue, a band and a guest list. I told myself that
     Luke wouldn’t havecome anyway, but in
     the brief pause in our conversation, I imagined what he would have said of it afterwards
     if he had.
    ‘It’s the principle of the
     thing,’ I could hear him saying to Julia.
    Why hadn’t I sent him an invitation?
     Because his presence would stir up too much? Or because he might have felt obliged to
     come even though he might not have wanted to return to Nairobi?
    The truth is, I didn’t want him
     intruding into my world, into a reality I had made for myself, into something that had
     nothing to do with him.
    ‘I never saw you as the marrying type,
     Nick, but I do hope you and your bride-to-be have a lovely day,’ he said, and
     sounded like he meant it, which only made things worse. I wondered what he meant by
     ‘not the marrying type’.
    ‘I’ll be thinking of you.
     It’s …’ He hesitated.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing. I want the best for you,
     Nick. I always have.’
    I felt a lump in my throat. I wanted to say
     ‘thank you’, to say ‘sorry’, but what I said was ‘Murphy
     will do the honours.’
    ‘Murphy? Your wedding, Mum’s
     funeral … What would we do without him?’
    The sarcasm was there, but I chose to ignore
     it. Luke slurred his next words: ‘You left so quickly after the funeral
     …’
    ‘You know me, Luke. Not one for
     goodbyes.’
    ‘I suppose not,’ he said.
    The party was louder now as he moved closer
     to it, andfurther, it seemed, from me. I
     could hardly make out what he said next: ‘I suppose there’s never a right
     time to say goodbye.’
    He thanked me for calling, offered his
     congratulations again, and said something about meeting up in the not-too-distant
     future,