The wedding was arranged for the first Saturday in June. Beaumont Hotel, the venue for Anna and Tony’s wedding, had been booked. All fourteen bedrooms and the Bridal Suite, allocated. The hotel’s Master Chef consulted. Wine and menus for five courses finalised.

Flowers to bedeck the ancient abbey had been selected from the Royal florist. The Bishop primed. James Wright Thompson had spared no expense for the wedding of his only daughter, Anna.

A hotel in the Caribbean for a three week honeymoon, arranged. James had flown out to check the location when the engagement was announced. Anna trusted her father to do the best for her. Enid, her mother, a quiet, unassuming woman, went along with the plans without any word of complaint or discourse.

James, a rich banker in the City, knew who to call on for favours. Well respected, friends and business colleagues never dared to refuse his polite but persuasive demands. In the past, he’d shared insider knowledgeable on lucrative money markets. In return, due to their subsequent prosperity, to ignore James’s requests was like cutting one’s own financial throat.

Shame that Anna’s fiancé, Tony Wilkinson, was a mere plumber. Shame too that Tony ignored his future father-in-law’s advise on investing in stocks and shares. Anna’s father had to concede that Tony was a pleasant young man, but a bit rough around the edges, and at the beginning of their relationship, he’d hoped the romance would soon fizzle out.

Anna, often embarrassed by her father’s obvious wealth and propensity to boast, nevertheless loved her father and having inherited his strong will, she was determined to marry the young man of her choice.

Last year, when she’d met Tony in the gym, the first thing she’d noticed were his brown eyes. After that meeting, she admired his honesty when he admitted exercise was not a past time he enjoyed.

Amused, she’d asked him why then was he pumping iron. He’d replied, with a wry smile, he was in training for the London Marathon to raise money for his favourite charity, the R.S.P.C.A.

When Anna introduced Tony to her father, James had hidden his disapproval with a rather painful, firm hand shake. Wary, Anna watched the meeting between the two most important men in her life. Despite her love for her father, she didn’t quite trust his overzealous greeting, but admired Tony’s pleasant resistance not to be undermined.

Over the following months, her mother, Enid, grew fond of her daughter’s boyfriend. ‘Lovely man, Anna,’ she’d say after the occasional Sunday lunch. ‘Keep him close.’

Sadly, disaster struck six months before the arranged wedding. The money market collapsed and with it, James’s high profile career crumpled into a place on the dole queue.

Then his over-mortgaged home in Surry was repossessed by the very bank he’d worked for, and Anna’s parents were forced to move into modest, rented accommodation close to Clapham Common.

Weeks later, Anna noticed that her mother, far from being distraught and usually taciturn, now appeared more voluble and smiled a lot.

‘This is what my life was like before your father reached the pinnacle of his career,’ Enid confided in her daughter as they shopped in Budget Supermarket one afternoon. ‘I admit money helps, but too much clouds the senses and makes those who have wealth insensitive to others.’

On the date of their arranged marriage, Anna and Tony set off for Gretna Green without telling friends or family. There in a modest but romantic venue, they both sealed their mutual love and commitment without any ado.

That night, after darkness fell, they cuddled up together on a mattress in the back of Tony’s van. There they made love under the duvet to the accompaniment of Fleet Foxes playing quietly on the Radio 2.