Wedding by Sharon McDougal

The white view flickered with snowflakes. Increasingly fat now, splattering at the car windscreen in a cartoonish way. It looked chaotic and nice. Why didn’t he mind the disruption?

5.32pm. He’d left work at 4, he should have been back half an hour ago. Cath hadn’t texted yet, soon she would.

It was definitely falling more heavily. ‘Substantial snowfall’ the radio confirmed. He felt something inside him relax, he noted that he must have been in dread a bit. He was glad of this intervention.

Maybe there would be a lull in life. A standstill over the entire weekend. A freeze-frame of him, now, stuck in time.

The Wedding by Lucy Thomas

The American woman was still sitting by the window when they returned from their walk. Peeling off their wet clothes, Margot staggered trying to loosen a welly and laughed as she clutched at Rob, the sound breaking the silence of the virtually empty hotel. It had been Rob's idea to come away early for their friends' wedding, to make a holiday of it and despite her earlier concerns she was now pleased. It was good to get away from London and, she guiltily admitted to herself, the house and the children, their very solid, noisy presence a constant reminder of what was now absent. The woman at the window had turned at their noisy entrance and Margot suddenly saw herself reflected in the barely contained distaste she thought she detected in the woman's glance. She felt self conscious, her happiness an artifice, the girlish laughter purely an attempt at feeling light hearted, as if with trying hard enough she could expunge the previous year, she could convince herself that she was happy and if she could convince herself then she could convince Rob too. This was a fragile facade she had constructed, just a glance could dismantle it, she felt panicked, the whole weight of her responsibilities and attendant grief and disappointments threatening to pull her under, suffocating and inescapable. 'What the hell am I doing here?' she thought, the hotel drawing room suddenly too hot, too silent and Rob walking towards her, smiling, oblivious to the shattering of her much fought for earlier positive mood.