Small crescent moon on the nape of the neck

You will not believe the state of the marquee. The generator gave up at half nine, just as Auntie Rosie started the speeches, and the whole field went black except for the tea urns glowing like a pair of wet coppers. Somebody shouted for candles. Mr Pryce from the chapel found a box of tea lights in his coat, and the bride's brother kept waving a torch at the cake as if it might try to escape.

Then the cloud peeled back and there was the moon, a thin sliver hanging over the church tower, not quite full and not quite new. Its dark side was faintly visible, the grey of an old slate roof, and the bright edge looked as if someone had scraped it with a fingernail. Everyone went quiet. Even the vicar stopped fiddling with his cufflinks. Mum says the old people in Penhale call that the bent lantern, and that you only see it that clearly when someone is about to leave.

I thought of that when Joe asked me to hold the ring, because he had lost his nerve and I had the steadiest hands in the family. I held it up under the moonlight, and for once nobody needed me to fix anything. Dad would have laughed at the state of me. The ring went on, the cake got cut by torchlight, and the generator coughed back to life during the last dance, which Auntie Rosie insisted was a miracle and the rest of us agreed was just bad timing.

Write back soon and tell me whether Mum has forgiven me for the candles. I have kept the one tea light that did not blow out. It sits on my windowsill, and I think of it as a small moon I was allowed to keep.

Love, Tess