It was early August and their baby was due in two days’ time and still James had not been able to marry her. Despite polite letters, despite Manu and Zayn’s best attempts, they were blocked at each turn as they tried to get the necessary documentation.
‘I’m just going to ask her father,’ James said, and then he picked up the phone and spoke in Arabic, not with Farrah but with the king.
He kept it brief.
‘I need Leila’s birth certificate,’ James said, and he knew the drama that would be going on in the palace tonight because he had had the audacity to call. ‘If I am to marry her.’
He was met with silence.
‘If it isn’t here within a week, then I will call every day,’ James said. ‘Or I will write letters, or I shall email, or I shall write to your press. I hope the noise I make—’ Manu’s lips pursed because of course what James would do would cause offence, but James had been practising this on his own and he cleared his throat ‘—will not upset your wife too much and in turn cause too many problems for you?’
It came in the post a week later.
Two days after that he stood with Leila in Central Park and married her on the very spot that James had told her he was in love with her. Then they had a photo taken on the bench where Leila had used to sit, drinking coffee, and where he had found her sitting that night. Already they had so many memories.
It was the tiniest of weddings.
Leila wore a cream robe that was threaded with silks that were the colours of the changing trees around them and, as James had said it would be, her favourite place in the world was spectacular at this time of the year.
James wore a suit but not socks and though he had had his hair cut for the day, on Leila’s instructions he hadn’t shaved.
They just grabbed passing joggers who were happy to stand for the brief service that was so terribly important to them but especially to Leila, for she wanted to be married before the baby was born.