“Look at you. The nervous groom,” he swept Roger into an impromptu bear hug. “You’ll have a fabulous life together. You were made for each other.”
Roger groaned under the weight of affection he had not entirely come to terms with yet and left him temporarily drained of oxygen. With one extra hard hug for good measure, Butlins finally released him, flushed and thinking of Irene; the collision of two completely different worlds soon to be pressed together for perpetuity.
‘Muck and Brass’, his mother’s mantra returned with all the conviction of a hardened salesman from a determinedly sunless sky. Perhaps, after all, his mother would not have disapproved of Irene and her outlandish ways; her constant need to be surrounded by people who were not quite what they seemed. Her unquestioningly open welcomes filling her tiny unkempt flat with the lost and the lonely hiding behind extravagant personalities. It pleased him to imagine that she may even have approved of Irene’s predilection for taking money for sexual favours on some mercenary level. Feeling strangely sentimental for the blackened stonework of Sheffield, Roger gathered his composure and straightened his second best suit, fiddling with the collar and stroking a thin fingered hand over the brown fabric of a jacket that was no longer a perfect match for the faded trousers.