A sizzling thriller, A. E. Gauntlett’s The Stranger at the Wedding will make you think twice before saying “I do.”
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from A.E. Gauntlett’s The Stranger at the Wedding, which is out August 13th 2024.
Before love at first sight, there were things no one saw.
Annie never much believed in love. That is, until meeting Mark. After crossing paths on morning commutes, they connect at a group counseling session for trauma survivors. Each recognizes something in the other, though both hide their own troubled pasts.
It’s a whirlwind romance that propels Annie through their courtship, all the way to her wedding day—a day she couldn’t have predicted for herself once upon a time yet now feels surer about than anything in her life.
But as Annie stands at the altar, casting her eyes over the rows of well-wishers, she spots a stranger in the crowd, and she soon learns that her new life isn’t going to be the happily ever after that she had planned. Who is the stranger at the wedding? What really happened to Mark’s first wife? And was Annie and Mark’s meeting as random as it first appeared, or is something more sinister at work?
CHAPTER 2
Whenever anyone asks me how Mark and I first met, I never quite know what to say. It wasn’t a thunderclap or a right hook to the temple; it wasn’t a forest fire or an orchestral swelling. No one turned off gravity and the oceans didn’t upend. It was gentle. It was slow. It was two cold marbles grazing each other and finding a little warmth.
I’d like to say that we met at a cinema, two lone souls in an empty auditorium, dimly aware of the other’s existence until the lights came up and all we saw was each other; or a dropped glove in the manner of Cinderella’s glass slipper – retrieved, cherished and returned to the appendage of the rightful owner many years later. But it was far simpler than that. Unremarkable, even. You see, we met on a commuter train. Not the Orient Express or a bullet train hurtling to Kyoto for the first sakura of spring. No. We met on the 05.38 service to London Bridge, and not a dining car in sight. ‘Excuse me. Ma’am?’
I looked up from my window seat to a squat gentleman with horn-rimmed glasses bearing down at me.
‘Could you move your bag?’
The man sat down beside me and opened a newspaper, which blew into my face with each gust of wind that caught the carriage.
Up and down the train, bleary-eyed commuters drifted in and out of sleep, their heads gently falling to the windows or to the shoulders of their neighbours. The same old faces dozing in the same old patterns on the same old train, rolling past the same old landscapes. My life, I had to admit, had hit a bump in the road or else a kink in the track – which was mad, for had anyone else been gifted my lot, they would have thought themselves lucky. I had a good job, a small but perfectly formed two-bedroom flat in the city, a place in the country and a handful of close friends.
I was lucky, but I wasn’t happy and I hated myself for that.
I was beset by the nagging feeling that my life was somehow empty. I tried to fill it as far as possible – I joined a gym, but lacked the motivation; I took up karate, but couldn’t bear to make contact; I’d put a film on, but spend the entire time flicking through dating apps on my phone, awaking to the credits and a red wine puddle soaking into my jeans. I was existing, not living.
So, I guess you could say my life had stalled. But before you go getting visions of Bridget Jones – lone girl in the big old city looking for Mr Right or Mr Right Now – don’t. I’d never been one for romance, which I’d long written off as a fiction. Apart from the odd drunken swiping (more left than right), I wasn’t looking for love and I’d decided I wouldn’t much know what to do with it. Imagine my surprise, then, when love found me.
The train pulled into the next station, and amid the crush of commuters fighting for a seat, on he stepped, composed. A long lock of dark-brown hair broke free to graze his forehead, just above his eyebrows. He stood in the middle of the aisle, one arm held aloft, gripping the bar for support, as the train sped away from the station and took a sharp bend. There was something in the way he held himself – with a natural grace that spoke of great inner confidence – and the way he smiled gently at a thought that had passed through him, that inspired in me a wealth of feeling that I often struggle to put into words. The more I looked at him, the more I thought I understood him: the job he held, the people he met, the procession of ex-girlfriends who left love-starved voicemails on his phone. He could be whomever I wanted him to be.
The lights went out in the carriage, and when they came back on, the man was looking at me, his genes declaring themselves in the brightest shade of blue I had ever seen. I made to speak, to break the spell, but a gust of wind rattled the length of the carriage and caused my neighbour’s newspaper to hit me full in the face. The man saw. The man smiled.
*
And now I see him as I did in that moment, save that this time he’s in his baby-blue suit, standing by the altar, waiting patiently for me. My beautiful bridesmaids – Karen and Laura – are standing opposite in their pastel-pink dresses, each with a clutch of golden lilies pressed to their chests. They smile out at me too, knowing intimately how much I thought this day might never come to pass, and how utterly glad I am that it did. My cold feet have grown warm.
I reach the end of the aisle, stumble a little, nearly fall into him, recover, and find myself passed from mother to future son-in-law as though the two are exchanging goods. Despite the pomp and circumstance – the painted ladies and pretty dresses, the eager attendees, the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce out front, the carefully choreographed ceremony and the joyous solemnity of the occasion – in this very moment, and this very moment alone, I feel like cattle. And this is my meat market.
The vicar addresses us, the couple, the church, but the words do not register. This has all happened before and this shall happen again. My parents were married here, and my father’s parents before them. Friends, cousins, uncles, aunties have stood here too, in this exact spot, under the mottled light of these stainedglass windows, beside these mighty stone arches, afore the throng of fifty pairs of seated eyes, and have made their vows, pledged their presents, their futures, to one another. They have sworn to live out their remaining years together, and I am about to do the same. Our union is just the latest in a long line of unions – some of which shall remain intact, some of which shall be broken. Not ours. We shall remain strong; Mark and I shall prosper. We have each, individually, weathered so very much. We shall both, together, weather so much more.
As Mark reaches up to my face and gently lifts my veil, I want to cry. I fight hard to hold back, but I catch myself. Oh, no, you don’t, Annie. Almost there. I try to shake these last self-sabotaging thoughts from my head and look to the room, to the faces staring back at me – to Karen, who has loved and will always love; to Mother, who cannot love; to dear patient Laura, who only wanted the best for me; to Mark’s father and Jean, his wife; to all our friends and colleagues, who sit there with bushy-tailed anticipation.
Until I see a face that is stark for its unfamiliarity. This man is all angles – high, prominent cheekbones, a severe pointed chin and slick dark hair swept from temple to temple above a furrowed forehead. His clavicles stand proud against his shirt. He regards me now with a cool, detached stare, as though he is looking right through me and has seen something that he doesn’t like, something that has fired a bitterness in his mouth.
Mark gently takes my hand in his and I turn to him. ‘I’m terrified,’ he says quietly as the vicar gestures for the church to fall silent.
The stranger regards me still.
‘Me too,’ I whisper.
