twenty seven

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July

"Isabel! Isabel, hold this!"

Someone was thrusting a bouquet of lilies at her, and Isabel just managed to blindly grab them before they fell on the floor, a few petals peeling off in the ruckus which resulted in a sigh from the indiscernible assailant.

"Fix your fringe!" the person snapped, and this time there was no doubting that Isabel was being chided by her older sister. Savannah didn't give Isabel a chance to fix anything; she attacked Isabel's messy hair with her fingers, desperately trying to flatten the flyaway strands that a stylist had already spent the last hour and a half trying to tame.

"Get off, Sav!" Isabel snapped, shoving her sister away. "I'm not six years old."

"Don't sulk like it then," Savannah hissed. "This day is not about you."

"She doesn't think it's about her," someone said, coming to Isabel's aid. Both sisters span around to meet the gaze of Madeline – the bride's sister – who was standing nervously behind the bickering siblings, pulling at the hem of her dress. Madeline was only fifteen, but was already 5 foot 11 and had thick, unruly black hair and wire rimmed glasses, a combination that accumulated to low self-confidence and painful shyness.

"Thanks, Madeline," Isabel smiled, and Savannah rolled her eyes.

"Are we nearly ready girls?" asked the father of the bride, shifting nervously from foot to foot as he clutched his daughter's arm and tried his best not to peer through the door of the church to see the waiting crowd within.

Georgia, who had been staring at the floor in what could only be described as complete terror, let out a whimper. "What if I fall over?" she squealed to Savannah.

"You won't," Savannah said firmly, fully transforming into bossy, self-important mode, petting Georgia's hair and fiddling with her veil. "When I got married, Alex was absolutely hammered by the time I got there and –"

Isabel zoned out, having heard the story far too many times for it to be interesting anymore, even when Savannah grossly exaggerated the events in increasing measure every time she retold it.

"You look nice," she said to Madeline. She really did – now that her hair was pushed back into the same half-up, half-down style that the two Allen sisters had and she could no longer hide behind it, Isabel could see that the glasses framed her amazing bone structure well, and she had beautiful clear skin and shining blue eyes.

"So do you," Madeline grinned shyly. "I love your hair."

"Tell that to my sister," Isabel grumbled, and Madeline laughed. "What are older sisters like, eh?"

"Fucking irritating, that's what," Madeline muttered. "Is it bad that I can't wait for this day to be over so that Georgia will finally shut up about it?"

"Trust me, she won't," Isabel told her. "My sister got married five years ago and I still haven't heard the last of it."

"Oh great," Madeline replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes, and Isabel decided she liked her a lot.

"Okay, we're going, we're going!" barked Savannah. "Right, so Georgia and Gary, you two first, then Madeline, then me and you, Issy – who do you want with you?"

Isabel blinked at her. "What?"

"Which child!" Savannah shrieked. "Which child: Ruby or Abigail?"

Isabel had been too busy rolling her eyes at her sister's bossiness that she'd completely forgotten there were the two little flowergirls – her niece Ruby, and Georgia's goddaughter Abigail – to contend with, neither of whom had been present at yesterday's rehearsal. Weighing up her options, Isabel was vaguely horrified at the thought of carrying a baby who couldn't have been older than a year down the aisle, just in case she tripped and squashed it, or dropped it, or it started screaming in her inexperienced arms.

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