They’ve always been a good-looking couple.

I said, ‘you’ve scrubbed up well,’ to Charlotte when I found her after the ceremony, in the still centre of an eddy of well-wishers.

She smiled. I felt a wash of everything run off her when she smiled, happiness, exhaustion, nervous energy. She smiled with her teeth shut together.

‘It went well, didn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Darling, even with your slip up over the vows, it was stunning. You two are so in love. It’s clear from a mile off…’

Charlotte laughs, her shoulders dipping, relaxing. A woman in a tightly wrapped purple dress grabs Char’s arm. She turns. I wait at her back. Her attention is taken by the woman, and then by another, and then another, and then a man in a grey and black suit, and then another. I decide to look for the bar, before the money Char and Greg have put behind it runs out.

This is my fifth wedding this year. Only my second where I’ve been invited to the ceremony as well. Perhaps Char and Greg decided to counterweigh this favour with not giving me a ‘plus one’ invitation, or maybe they have known me for too long, and too well, to expect me to acquire a love interest in the seven months between the invitation and the wedding.

I’ve known Char and Greg since our uni days. Char and I took the same history of ideas class in the second year. We were the odd kids out. The ones who sat at the back of the lecture theatre rolling our eyes at the other students’ answers. We bonded in the class when one student – a girl, what was her name? – insisted that Greece shouldn’t be included in the course as it was too ‘backwards’.

‘So backwards that it gave the rest of the world maths and ethics,’ Char’d remarked. The girl had hissed and made some defensive excuses but Char and I were already laughing. A friendship born in the mocking of others maybe shouldn’t have lasted so long, but twenty odd years later I am here, a guest at her wedding.

Greg I met through Char, of course. When Charlotte and I were housemates for our final year she’d brought him back, a shuffling shy scruff. Char had told me many times how she planned to give up on boys who fit into her skinny jeans better than she did, but here was another.

I thought Greg seemed like he’d listened to Jeff Buckley too many times in his life. I thought that he was bound to be able to play ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’s riff on a guitar but little else. I didn’t expect him to be around long, but he stuck it out.

One morning Char couldn’t get out of bed from a vodka and red bull miasma, so Greg and I watched Cartoon Network together while he hung around waiting to see if she would emerge. He was pretty funny. We both loved Dexter’s Laboratory. Even now Char doesn’t get why, unprompted, I will say ‘labratory’ and he will respond ‘la-bora-tory’.

After uni Char and Greg moved in together. I didn’t expect it to last. She was as changeable as English spring. He was shy, unfolding into a brilliant funny gorgeous man if you got to know him, but reluctant to allow people to know him. I thought that Char would chafe at a grown-up life of staying in with him after the carousel of student booze offers and ticket discounts.

I moved to London. They stayed in Birmingham. My life became a thicket of things to be done and people to be known. I contact them for months at a time.

After I broke up with Vinnie Char and Greg had me to stay with them. We didn’t know any of the same people anymore. I didn’t want to see anyone who had known me as part of a couple with Vinnie. I felt as though I were a bleeding stump. Vinnie had broken my heart and left me lame. I dragged the corpse of our failure around with me. Char and Greg fed me, though I didn’t feel like eating. They listened to me re-visit the same incidents over and over. They propped me in front of their teevee with pillows while they went to the shops. Greg put Cartoon Network on for me. After a long weekend with them I was ready to face London again. Maybe not quite ready to face dating, but the dead relationship didn’t pull at my heel with quite so much force as it had.

I get a drink at the bar and look around the reception venue. Couples press their shiny dresses and suits together, looking for reassurance in each other’s faces. I imagine them saying to each other, ‘did we have more people at our wedding?’ ‘did we have this wine?’. I imagine them thinking, ‘is this how we’d do it?’ ‘should we have Chinese lanterns too?’.

The dancefloor is still empty. The guests’ timidity will run out at roughly the same time as the free bar. A couple are standing at the edge of the dancefloor, talking to each other but with a gap between their bodies that make me look again. Perhaps they are not together. The man is wearing a dark purple suit with shiny lapels. He has his head tilted down towards the woman. Her hair falls down her back in a controlled wave. I can’t see her face, she’s facing away from me. I wonder if they are on the brink of getting together or of breaking up. I could go closer. It might be a little creepy to eavesdrop on their conversation, but I am grabbed by a curiosity to know what hangs between them.

The man is speaking slowly to the woman. I can tell as he nods his head as he speaks, His head is nodding at a half beat, completely at odds with the Shakira song now playing. A set of young girls have run to the dancefloor. They aggressively tilt their hips at one another. The woman in the corner raises a hand to the man’s face and strokes his cheek. They are a couple, then.

She shakes her head. Her hair falls long down her back. She is wearing a shimmering dress that catches the disco lights in the room and throws splashes of colour onto the wall next to her. The dj has, enlivened by the reception of Shakira, moved on to Britney Spears. He had misjudged the range of the young girls’ tastes in historic pop. They shake their heads at each other before leaving the dancefloor empty.

Is she angry? I wish I could see her face. His has the occasional strobe light thrown across it. It flashes on him now. He is laughing.

I have seen that look on a man’s face before. I saw it on Greg’s earlier today. Vinnie wore it for me in the past. They must be a couple.

I look down at my empty glass. Why should I feel envious of them and not of the other couples thronging the room? I turn back to the bar to order a fresh drink. It seems the free bar has ended. I buy a single gin and tonic, with no ice as I plan to drink it as slowly as possible. I have been single at weddings all year and have learnt that being drunk and single at a wedding is not a great look for anyone.

Couples have begun milling onto the dancefloor. They cradle one another. It is the time for wistful pop. The dj is playing Westlife. Between the drifting dancing bodies I spy the two of them again. They have turned so that they both watch the dancefloor. The man has an arm encircling her shoulders so that she leans against the front of his body. Her face is unremarkable. I am disappointed.

I notice that she has tears running down her cheeks. She doesn’t wipe them away. They are breaking up, then.

The dj puts on Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’. Char and Greg arrive on the dancefloor. They have been practicing this dance. Char more than Greg it seems. This is the first time I have ever seen Greg dance. He is red in the face and sweat darkens under his arms and down his back. He is laughing. They both are. I look away from them to the woman and the man. They’re not in their spot anymore. I don’t see them dancing. I feel betrayed for some reason. I go out into the corridor and I see the woman putting on a coat. She’s shaking her head.

‘No – don’t,’ she says.

The man puts a hand on her elbow, and takes the hand away. She goes out. Maybe she has a taxi waiting. He puts his hands on his hips. I go back into the hall before he turns to see me looking.

‘Crazy in Love’ has finished, but the dj is capitalising on his full dancefloor and has picked ‘Single Ladies’ to follow it. Char appears in front of me and grabs me with sweaty hands.

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘come on and dance.’