He’d told me, and more than once, that it was all he was living for, to marry me. In the end, there seemed little point in waiting. Both Mama and the Boyds had said so. ‘The sooner you marry the better,’ Mama had said. ‘It will give poor Charlie the motivation he needs to pull through and make a full recovery.’ In the weeks leading up to my wedding Mama had repeatedly told me that I was a little too thin, a little too pale. But I had no appetite for food, and no appetite for marriage. On the day, an hour or so before the service, and sitting on my bed with Rose, I pushed a needle into my vein, and she said, ‘I’m really not sure it’s a good thing for you to be doing this at this moment in time . . .’ Minutes later, she stood with me, holding back my veil, as I’d retched over the lavatory, and then she held me as I cried silently on her shoulder. It was the last time I ever took morphia. Henry had managed to secure two days’ leave and came home to give me away, and after the wedding we had a small reception at Claridges.
