More Than You Can Say by Paul Torday Page B

truly alive.

Five
    The next morning, I had difficulty in remembering where I was, or why I was there. Then I remembered: Mr Khan. This was my wedding day.
    ‘I’m getting married in the morning,’ I hummed to myself, ‘Ding dong, the bells are going to chime,’ trying to brush my teeth at the same time. The result was messy. I finished shaving and then climbed into my smart new wedding clothes, making sure I transferred my belongings into the pockets. Another hour or two and I would be clutching a large cheque, happily married and counting off the hours and days, weeks and months until I could file for divorce.
    It had been a diverting interlude. My life had been so deadly boring for such a long time that the last couple of days had been an almost welcome change. If only there was someone I could have shared the joke with: walking to Oxford for a bet, being kidnapped by thugs, then married off to a beautiful girl from Afghanistan. And being well paid for it.
    I caught sight of myself in the mirror: a foolish man in a wedding suit with a stupid grin on his face. Suddenly I felt sick. What the hell was I doing? How on earth could I contemplate marrying some wretched girl then simply taking the money and walking off with it in my pocket? Of course I couldn’t share the joke. If I told anyone what I was up to theywould look at me in disgust. No wonder I had so few friends left, apart from the card-playing vultures at the Diplomatic.
    I was sick. Sick in the head even to be thinking about doing this. I ought to just get up and leave.
    That would be difficult, though. After all the trouble he had gone to, Mr Khan didn’t seem the kind of man who would let his guest slip through his fingers. I went to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. Even if I could get out of the room somehow, I was likely to meet Kevin. Kevin struck me as the type of person who lacked any common sense and would be quite likely to shoot me just to see what happened next.
    Another thought struck me. Once Mr Khan had obtained my signature on the marriage register, was he really going to let me go just like that? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and better for him if I disappeared? For the first time I began to wonder whether the situation I found myself in might not be more serious than I had at first imagined.
    Before I met the girl I had assumed this was simply a rather elaborate way of obtaining a UK residency permit for another illegal immigrant: perhaps a cousin of Mr Khan’s from Lahore or Peshawar, or a girl to whose family he owed a favour. But the more I thought about him, the more Mr Khan reminded me of other people I had met in the past: people whose moral values and objectives were very different from the rest of the world’s. The truth was, there was no knowing what Mr Khan would do once I had completed my part of the deal. Maybe the plan they had made for me did not include a happy ending, after all.
    There was a knock at the door, and I heard the key turn. David came into the room.
    ‘It is time, Mr Gaunt,’ he told me.
    *
    The wedding party was conveyed to the register office in two black Range Rovers. I saw the girl for the briefest moment, being shepherded by David, who had swapped his role as assistant for that of chauffeur, and the man who had kidnapped me with Kevin. His name was Amir, and he was not in the same class as Kevin. He looked much more formidable. The girl was wearing a beautifully cut dark blue jacket over a skirt of the same material. She was dressed as if for a smart day’s shopping in Bond Street – unless you looked at her face, that is. Then you wondered whether she wasn’t on her way to a funeral.
    I travelled in the second vehicle, in the rear, while Mr Khan sat in the front and Kevin drove. Mr Khan was wearing a morning coat in the same charcoal material as my own, and there was a white rose in his lapel. He handed another rose to me and ordered, ‘Put this in your buttonhole.’
    We proceeded at a stately