In the end, I hang Florence’s dress next to my ruined one, close the wardrobe door and try to forget it. At some point I’ll have to break the news that I’m not going to wear it, but procrastination is hugely underrated.

Over the next couple of days I decide that the pretty maxi dress I wore to Maura’s wedding in London will do for getting married in. Wearing pale lemon cotton isn’t how I imagined myself going up the aisle but it seems shallow to get hung up about clothes when it’s only thanks to people’s kindness that we’re getting married at all.

Seeing as I’ve gone off piste with the dress, I’ve told my bridesmaids they can wear what they like on the big day so we’re going to look a right ragbag going up the aisle. Me in a summer frock, Kayla done up to the nines in a slinky body-con from her wardrobe, Emily in something frilly and frumpy and Storm in Doc Martens and jeans. It’ll certainly be a wedding that Salt Bay will never forget.

Talking of unforgettable, Roger’s doing his best to make himself irresistible to Jennifer by sticking to Kayla’s regime, which he describes as boot camp. It’s early days but it’s already starting to pay off.

He’s definitely looking more svelte when I nip into the pub after leaving work early on Friday afternoon. He’s slimmed off slightly around the neck and belly, he’s got new specs, and he’s wearing a moss green T-shirt that suits his colouring better. Best of all, the ubiquitous summer damp patches under his arms have disappeared.

‘I made him change his deodorant,’ says Kayla when I mention it. ‘I should have done it ages ago ’cos now the bar’s far more fragrant. I’ve also culled the pub’s CD collection by telling him Jennifer hates pan pipes. He threw all his pipes CDs in the bin straight away. Result! You customers owe me a debt of gratitude.’ She clenches her fist and punches the air.

‘Does she hate pan pipes?’

‘She must do. No one in their right mind can stand the damn things. They’re far too… cheerful. I told him she loves Radiohead so he’s ordered a job-lot of their CDs from Amazon. My wiles are legendary.’

She wanders off looking pleased with herself while I sip at my lemonade. I’ve only nipped into the pub to escape Rob, who’s doing another evaluation of the roof’s condition for Toby. My cousin wants to double-check what he’ll be paying out once the house is his which is fair enough. But I can’t face a conversation with Rob about a roof that soon won’t be mine.

Fortunately Rob’s van has gone when I get home and it’s blissfully quiet because everyone else is out. I’m planning on having a cup of tea in the sitting room but first I head to my bedroom for a cardigan. The hot weather has returned and emmets are out in force but the temperature noticeably drops inside the house’s thick stone walls.

On the landing, a large steamer trunk is blocking the way and I spot a scrawled note on top.

Found this in corner of attic and have brought down so it won’t get wet when rain comes in again.

When rain comes in again… Toby had better pull his finger out and get this house purchase finalised.

I run my hand along the top of the trunk, which is bound by thick wooden bands and covered in dust. I’ve never seen it before but then again I’ve hardly ever been in the attic.

There’s a pile of junk up there plus loads of spiders so I only ventured up the loft ladder once and came right back down again when a web brushed my face. Flood, bereavement and cancelled weddings, I can cope with. Eight-legged arachnids with hairy bodies – not so much.

Two heavy metal clasps on front of the trunk give a satisfying clunk when I unfasten them and push open the heavy domed lid. Piles of photos and yellowing papers are stacked up inside.

Sitting back on my heels, I pull out a handful of pictures. Most are black and white, but some are in colour though the colours are fading to brown. These are amazing! A few of the photos are more recent and include two shots of my mum as a young woman with her long fair hair. They must have been taken just before she left Salt Bay for good.

But most of the photos show people in old-fashioned clothes. One particularly striking picture is of a middle-aged couple sitting near a huge fern in an enamelled planter. The woman is wearing a high-necked blouse and dark jacket over a belted full skirt. The man standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder is in a smart suit with a watch chain looping from his waistcoat pocket.

Neither of them are smiling. In fact, they look terrifyingly severe but they probably weren’t allowed to move for ages while the picture was taken on a Box Brownie. It was a big deal back then. Not like nowadays when people are always shoving iPhones in your face.

Spidery black writing is scratched across the back of the picture which is mounted on thick card: Benjamin and Charlotte Trebarwith. They must be ancestors of mine. My DNA and theirs are linked. Do I look like them? I study the shape of their mouths and the angle of their cheekbones and shiver. The thought of looking like people so long gone is weird.

Putting the pile of photos to one side, I pull out a large bible from the trunk, which is bound in mottled brown leather with gold lettering. The tissue-thin leaves are loose when I carefully open up the book and there, written out in blue ink on the inside cover, is the Trebarwith family tree.

This is brilliant! It’s like being on Who Do You Think You Are? and striking gold at the end of the programme. So Danny Dyer can trace his roots back to William the Conqueror? Well, I can now trace mine back to – I run my finger along the main branch of the family tree – Jeremiah Trebarwith, born in Cornwall in 1638. Amazing!

My mum’s name, Joanna, lies beneath the names of my grandparents Samuel and Sheila and under her there’s a question mark. That must be me. I was nothing but a question mark to the Trebarwith family for ages but now I belong.

After carefully placing the bible on the landing carpet, I delve into the trunk and pull out a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. The paper was probably once white but has yellowed with time and, when I peel it back, I stop breathing. Nestled in the fragile parcel are children’s clothes.

There’s a Babygro made of white flannelling and tiny baby shoes in soft beige leather. Underneath lie a pair of small grey shorts and what looks like a school tie. A striped child’s top is wrapped around a silver frame which holds a family photo. Three people are smiling at the camera – a young woman I immediately recognise as Alice, a handsome dark-haired man whose eyes crinkle at the edges and, between them, a small boy in grey shorts with a mischievous grin.

‘Hello, Freddie. How marvellous to see you at last,’ I whisper, tracing the outline of his face with my finger. I can only imagine the devastation soon after this photo was taken when Freddie caught measles and died from complications. No wonder Alice hid away this cruel reminder of what she’d lost.

Children are playing outside on the harbour sand and their shouts drift through the open windows as I cry for lost Freddie and lost Alice. How could she bear to go on without her beloved son?

I sit snivelling for a while, afraid to delve further into the trunk that’s unlocking pain from the past and pulling it into the present. Though maybe Alice would be glad it’s out in the open at last.

‘You’ve come this far, Trebarwith, so get a grip and keep going,’ I say out loud, my words echoing down the stairs.

Next out of the trunk is a pile of old school reports dating back to the early 1930s and below them there’s a double layer of tissue. My fingers push around the tissue and touch fabric – smooth fabric that’s heavy when I pull it from the trunk and gasp. I’m holding a beautiful wedding dress made of cream silk that’s nipped in at the waist with a long full skirt. It’s Alice’s, I’m sure of it, because her wedding photo from the 1960s was on her bedside table. But the lace overlay across the bodice and shoulders is delicate and the style suggests it’s from two decades earlier.

Whenever it was made, the dress is absolutely gorgeous. Stripping off on the landing, I pull the dress over my head and it rustles down over me. The fabric smells slightly fusty but the dress fits, more or less. It’s too long and bunches around my feet but wearing high heels would fix that. Josh is over six feet tall so towering heels won’t be a problem – just so long as I practise walking in them first. Literally tripping up the aisle isn’t great on your wedding day.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Gathering up the skirt in both hands, I walk slowly into Alice’s bedroom and stand in front of the floor-length mirror propped up against the wall.

Yay! I don’t look half-bad. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I look pretty damn decent. The creamy colour of the silk complements my bright blue eyes and brown hair and warms my pale colouring. In fact, my face seems to glow. The only thing that spoils the effect are the mascara trails on my cheeks from all that snivelling.

‘Thank you, Alice,’ I say in the room that’s still full of her. ‘Is this the ideal wedding gift you told Josh you had for me?’

The front door slams and I start panicking in case it’s Josh but thundering footsteps coming up the stairs announce Storm’s arrival.

‘What’s all this crap?’ she grumbles, spotting the trunk and its contents strewn across the landing.

‘Storm, can you come here for a minute?’

‘Where are you?’ She clumps along the landing and comes to an abrupt halt at the bedroom door.

‘What the hell are you wearing?’

She’s hot and flustered and holding her blonde-streaked hair up off the back of her neck.

‘It’s a wedding dress.’

‘Well, duh! You’re hardly going to do the gardening in it, are you? Is that the dress Florence got married in? Only she must have been a lot less fat then.’

‘No, this is Alice’s wedding dress. I found it in the trunk that’s on the landing. What do you think?’

‘Hhmm.’ Storm walks all round me with her hands on her hips like she’s inspecting an ancient monument. ‘It’s not bad at all,’ she finally declares which in sulky teenage lingo means, ‘you look amazing’.

I smile and the skirt swishes around my legs when I do a twirl. ‘I don’t think Alice would mind if I wore this on my big day.’

‘I think the old lady would probably be all right with it. It’ll be like a bit of her is here supporting you and your family should always support you. Mums especially should always support their children even if it happens to inconvenience them a bit.’

‘Have you had a reply from your mum to the wedding invitation?’

‘Yeah, to the wedding invitation that I said not to send her. Most of the time you don’t tell me what the hell’s going on and the rest of the time you’re poking your nose into my business. Your behaviour is, like, totally inappropriate.’

I apologise while she stomps around the room to demonstrate how totally inappropriate my behaviour is. Then she fiddles with her phone and thrusts it under my nose so I can see recent text messages between her and her mum.

The last one from Amanda reads:

‘That’s disappointing, Storm. I only got involved because I wanted you to see your mum but Cornwall is a long way for her to travel.’

I’m making excuses for Amanda, who’s a right cow for not going out of her way to support her daughter. But I want to make my sister feel better.

‘Yeah, I know,’ she says, thrusting her phone back into her jeans pocket. ‘Salt Bay is at the end of the freaking world, but it wouldn’t be any different if you were getting hitched in Hackney. Amanda’s always got other stuff to do because she’s a very busy person. But that’s fine. I didn’t really want her here anyway, as you well know, and we only invited her to be polite.’

Storm never does anything to be polite, but I nod. ‘We’ll still have a fantastic day.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t have to wear some sad dress now you’re wearing that, do I?’

‘You can still wear what you like.’

‘Cool. And it will be a fantastic day.’ She lowers her chin and mumbles so I can hardly hear what she’s saying. ‘And even though you’re inappropriate, you still do a better job than Amanda.’

Without warning, she hurls herself into my arms and gives me a huge hug. Which is lovely but there are strawberry lolly stains round her mouth and strawberry juice and cream silk don’t mix. Patting her back, I force myself not to pull away when she squeezes me tight. To misquote Oscar Wilde: to lose one wedding dress may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like the universe screaming ‘Don’t get married!’

But I’ll always be here for Storm when her own mother isn’t. I hug her close and breathe a sigh of relief when her mouth brushes my hair and not Alice’s beautiful dress.