When all four women had finished the ice-cream and fruit – Hannah poured four cups of coffee and sat down. It amused Bette that Hannah and Elizabeth took turns to sit at the head of the table. She often wondered if such a compromise would ever be needed between her and Tina. She was thinking about the power politics between alpha lesbians when Elizabeth spoke

“I told Hannah about your problems with a wedding venue – do the two of you want to talk about it?”

Tina was about to say that they would be fine when she looked at Bette — she was the one who was taking the constant set backs the hardest. Tina had heard Bette say more than once that the wedding was cursed. It had been meant as a joke but with each fresh disappointment Tina was wondering if Bette was really believing that there was some cosmic force against them exchanging vows.

“We are just frustrated that’s all “ Tina said

“You must be “

“I think maybe we were naïve in thinking that planning a wedding was going to be easy “

Elizabeth looked at Hannah before speaking

“We have been very deliberate in not interfering in your plans because I do realise that it would be really easy for me to offer to try and solve everything for the two of you. I love both of you – we both love the pair of you more than we can say and you are my daughter Bette and you know that I probably go over the top in wanting to help and make things easy for you because of not being there for you when you needed me when you were growing up “

“Thanks mom – it means a lot to both of us that we have such a good relationship with both of you. As for the wedding – well Ti is right – we both thought it would be fairly simple to arrange. The truth is that when Tina first asked me we just sat round and tried to talk about the wedding but we always got sidetracked and our jobs and our friends got in the way “

“Not to mention my parents and the soap opera of their relationship” Tina said smiling