Notes

Secret Wedding
It had to be our occasion. Once set in motion, weddings become taken over by others. It was important to know all the way to the 'I do' that we were doing this for ourselves.

Where it was to happen needed to be a place special to both of us. Camberwell had been done, Islington much overrated. Chelsea emerged as the obvious candidate. Tessa had lived there until she was five and remembered Sundays in Battersea. I'd known it since I was little when my dad talked about it as somewhere that was the place to be. I'd fallen out of the car going to visit him when he was building houses in Chelsea Square.

Tessa would go back there with her mum to shop and have coffee in King's Road. For me, there'd been visits to the art school, 1970s' evenings in the Chelsea Potter and Saturdays working in the Village Gate.

Who else would know? Who would the witnesses be? 'Anonymous' didn't work. Apart from the impracticality of grabbing a pair of people off the street, this too had to be something special. It had to be someone for whom it mattered, a secret shared.

It worked. The Old Town Hall in King's Road on a Friday night in early March was the place and time to be. We had pictures taken at the top of the steps in its entrance lined with roses. People we didn't know called out their congratulations as they passed by.



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