Simi: a Londoner, who happens to be staying at the resort while the wedding is on

Rudd: the young manager of the resort

Katania: the mother of the bride

Jen and Hansie: the soon-to-be-married couple

Setting: Zimbabwe

“Jen and Hansie? Oh please! What do they know? They’ve never been married before. I’ve had two weddings, and I know what matters. It’s the looking fantastic. The evidence. It’s so important to do this stuff better than everyone else. You want them to talk about your wedding. The beautiful show. Tell me Simi, have you ever been married?”

“No.”

 “Then of course, you’ve no idea what I’m talking about. It’s like building a portfolio. It matters.”

Simi sipped slowly, eyes lowered. Nearly married she thought, as Katania clinked her teaspoon into her coffee and scraped out the last of its froth.  

“The trouble is,” Katania said, pausing to dab a napkin around her lips, “the real problem is that most people here will have no idea what I’m talking about. No disrespect – I love them all – but they’re too close to the earth all these farmers. All they want to talk about is crops, cattle, rain. Do you know what I mean?”

Simi looked at her. Neither cows, nor crops had been mentioned to her. A bit about a storm, but not much. Gossip and birdwalks yes, and now marriage, but not the farming stuff. Perhaps the ‘Londoner’ bit she thought, perhaps that’s what’s put them off.

Katania’s dark glasses stared at her expectantly.

“No? You don’t know what a I mean?”

Simi shook her head.

“Well, anyway, poor Jen has got a bit mixed up in it all, seduced somehow, but I think it’s a phase that she’ll grow out of. I know there’ll be other weddings for her. She just has to come and live with me for a few months in Paris and voilà, the lights will come on. Probably shouldn’t have left her here with her father, but what could I do?”

“And Hansie?”

“Oh, I think she’ll be happy to leave him behind, but the right sort of people will want to know what they’re getting. Believe me Simi, it’s a tough, glittery world if you want to be where the money is. Isn’t it like that with you in London?”

Simi put down her coffee. She considered the question.

“No. Not with me,” she said. “I’m no expert but I thought the idea was to stay with someone for life? Not marry them for show, or for money.”

“Oh, that’s hopeless. Romantic nonsense. Actually, I don’t expect you to understand Simi. It’s a tricky situation. But Jen will come round.”

“Really? Do you think that? She and Hansie seem pretty devoted from what I can see,” said Simi, turning her chair half round to face the view.

She had no idea what to say next. She barely knew the couple, but she liked what she’d seen and they seemed well suited. Her eyes reached out over the golf course, over the tea terraces, over the distant hills … reached out to anywhere that was not Katania.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023