No More Lonely Nights (2 page)

‘Thanks for having me, Jen,’ she told her cousin as she said goodbye on the harbour road. ‘It was wonderful.’

‘You look better, anyway,’ Jenny said, grinning at her.

‘I feel it—and when you and Roger come to London next month, don’t forget you’re staying with me!’

‘We won’t,’ Roger chimed in drily, and they all laughed. Then Sian got behind the wheel of her little Ford and gave them a final wave before heading towards London.

It was June; the morning was already quite warm by the time Sian reached the New Forest, and she drove with the windows wide open and cool air blowing through her blonde hair which she was wearing loose around her face. She was playing a tape of pop music, watching the way the shadows of trees flickered along the road, her mind vaguely drifting over the holiday, the shopping she must do when she was back in her flat, the excitement of getting back to work on Monday.

As she paused at a crossroads her eye noted the name of a nearby village on the signpost. Crasby? Wasn’t that where the big wedding was being held? Sian had never been asked to cover a society occasion before; it wasn’t her line of territory, the gossip column usually took care of weddings, but the reporter who should have covered this one had apparently rung in earlier to say she was in hospital after crashing on her way down. Leo always liked to kill two birds with one stone, so he had immediately thought of Sian, who was vaguely in the neighbourhood and could drop in at the church on her way back to London. He would just have to send someone else, thought Sian, driving on between the clustering trees.

The girl in white came running out right in front of the car a moment later, and Sian thought for a flash of time that she was seeing ghosts, then with a jolt of horror that she was going to hit the girl.

Luckily both her reflexes and her brakes were in good working order. She slammed her foot down, and the car came to a rocking halt with a scream of burning tyres.

Sian sat, gripping the wheel, for an instant, then she went white, and a second later bright, angry red.

‘Are you crazy?’ she yelled, leaning out of the window.

‘Sorry, I’m sorry,’ babbled the girl, stumbling round the car to the other window.

Sian’s blonde head followed her movements, her green eyes dilated and incredulous. She had had her eyes open for wild ponies or deer. All along the road there were signs warning drivers of their presence—but there were none telling you to beware of brides! The last thing Sian had been expecting to see was a bride in full regalia: an extravagantly romantic dress of foaming white satin and lace, a flowing veil thrown back from the face over a high head-dress of pearls and tiny white flowers, a beribboned bouquet of white roses and pink carnations clutched in the hand which had gripped the window-frame of the car.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you, and I am sorry, but please… could you give me a lift? It is urgent,’ the bride said breathlessly.

‘Don’t tell me the bridal car didn’t arrive,’ Sian said, unable to stay angry for long, and beginning to smile as she leaned over to open the passenger door. ‘Hop in, then.’

The bride bundled herself and all her layers of satin and lace into the seat with some difficulty, while Sian watched with amusement. The bride looked at her, not smiling back. Sian might find it funny, but obviously she couldn’t see the funny side of her predicament at the moment. In fact, there was a look of panic in her face, and Sian felt sorry for having laughed.

‘Please…’ the bride began, and Sian nodded.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you there on time,’ she soothed. ‘And I’m sure the groom will wait. Did you think of ringing the church to say you’d be late?’ And where was the bride’s father, come to that? she thought curiously, and then saw it had been a mistake to mention the groom. The bride was looking almost faint.

‘Can we go, please? I’m sorry to rush you but…’

‘Not at all,’ said Sian quickly, starting the engine again. ‘Can you direct me? Where’s the church? I’m a stranger around here—isn’t it always the way?’

The bride didn’t answer for a second, then she said huskily, ‘Where are
you
going?’

‘Back to London—I’ve been down here on holiday, sailing.’ Sian sat waiting, her hands on the wheel, the engine running, watching the other girl. ‘So? Where do I go?’ she prompted when the bride just bit her lip and said nothing.

‘London,’ whispered the bride. Sian did a double-take, doubting her own ears.

‘Sorry?’

‘London’s fine for me, too,’ repeated the other with a self-conscious look, her eyes not meeting Sian’s.

That was when Sian’s brain got to work on the situation and she remembered Leo’s call, the signpost she had noticed a few moments earlier. Of course, on a Saturday a lot of people got married, some churches had a constant stream of brides coming and going, but the coincidence was enough to make Sian sit up, alert and watchful.

‘London? You’re sure you want to go to London?’ she asked, and the dark girl nodded fiercely.

‘Yes, please, I’ve got to get away before…’

‘Before?’ Sian’s green eyes narrowed to catlike slits of comprehension. ‘Before someone catches up with you?’

The dark girl swallowed. ‘So please can we drive On?’ she muttered. Sian obeyed, putting her foot down on the accelerator. The car shot forward with a happy roar.

‘Why didn’t you change out of the wedding dress before you left?’ Sian asked curiously, and the girl sighed.

‘I didn’t think, I just climbed out of the window.’

‘Out of the window?’ repeated Sian incredulously.

‘We live in a bungalow—at least, my father does, and he was at the front, watching out for the car. I climbed out of my bedroom window.’

‘Why didn’t you just tell your father that you couldn’t go through with it?’

The bride groaned. ‘I’ve never been able to talk to Dad. If my Mum hadn’t died I might have told her, but Dad was so pleased that I was marrying Cass…’ She broke off, and Sian sat very still as she drove, her brain clicking wildly.

She was right, it had to be
him
, William Cassidy. Everyone called him Cass, especially the newspapers, and he was often in the news because he headed a successful electronics firm with a very active public relations department who managed to keep his name and the firm’s products firmly in the public eye. Sian didn’t work on the gossip pages, she was strictly a news reporter, but she had vaguely known of his surprise engagement and rapid wedding. Wasn’t he marrying his secretary, or a typist, or something? A very ordinary girl, anyway; that had excited the gossip columnists.

‘I’m Sian, by the way,’ she said carefully. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Annette.’

Sian couldn’t recall that name, but then she hadn’t looked at the bride’s name too closely. She hadn’t been sufficiently interested except to give the story her usual professional glance. One had to keep up with all the news in the paper. Sometimes two stories dovetailed unexpectedly, and if you didn’t know about the other one you might miss something vital. She probably wouldn’t have connected this girl with William Cassidy, for instance, if Leo hadn’t rung her earlier that morning. He had put the wedding into her mind, alerting her.

‘It’s very kind of you to do this,’ the other girl said shyly. ‘I realise it must seem a bit odd, but I just knew I couldn’t go through with it. All of a sudden I had to get away. Every time I tried to talk to Cass or to Dad the words didn’t come out right. They make me feel… helpless.’

Sian slowed as they approached a pull-off for picnicking, a grassy little glade opening from a parking area, but surrounded by trees. The other girl looked startled as Sian drove off the road.

‘What’s wrong? Why are you stopping?’

‘You don’t want to drive through London like that, do you? I think we’re much the same size. I’ve got a suitcase in the back, I’ll lend you some clothes to change into, if you like.’

‘Oh,’ Annette said, flushing. ‘Oh, thanks, that’s very…’

Sian parked and turned off the engine, but before she fished out her case she looked round at the other girl, her face serious. Sian was a slightly built girl of around twenty-five, with classical features and a cool, self-contained air. She gave the impression of having herself and her world well under control, but that wasn’t altogether accurate. Sian so far hadn’t managed to make her two lives fit, the personal and the professional. At the moment she would prefer to forget any idea of having a private life, anyway. She wasn’t risking the minefield of a love affair again for a long, long time, and she looked at Annette with wry sympathy.

‘Love’s tough to handle, isn’t it?’

Tears came into the other girl’s brown eyes and Sian looked away, not sure what to say to her.

Abruptly, she muttered, ‘Look, I know this isn’t any of my business, but I’ve got to stick my neck out. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? I mean, it is quite common for a bride to panic on her wedding day, or so I’m told.’ She laughed without real humour. ‘Personally, I wouldn’t know, of course, I’ve never got that far, but I’ve often heard of brides suddenly feeling they’ve made a mistake. It’s a big decision; scary, too, I’d imagine, but once you had gone through with it maybe you would realise it really was what you wanted, after all.’

‘No, that’s just it,’ burst out the other girl. ‘It never was.’

Sian looked sharply at her. ‘Never?’

‘No.’ Annette was very flushed, her tearful eyes enormous. ‘He asked me and I don’t even remember saying yes, but suddenly we were engaged and I felt like someone who had got caught up by something, a tornado, maybe, blowing me away. It all happened too fast and my father was so thrilled. Cass is… well, the man I’m marrying is rich, he can give me so much. Dad isn’t after the money, honestly, but he was pleased that I was going to be looked after. Dad isn’t very strong; his health is bad and since my mother died we’ve only had each other, there are no other relatives. Dad was afraid he would die and I’d be alone, so he sort of jumped at Cass, I’m afraid.’

‘But you must have liked… the man you’re engaged to,’ Sian suggested with care.

Annette bit her lip. ‘When I met him there was someone else, but he went away. He misunderstood, he thought I preferred Cass, but I didn’t— only, when Rick, the other man, left, I was miserable, and Cass was there, and I didn’t care about anything. It didn’t seem to matter whether I married Cass or not for a long time.’

A great light had dawned on Sian. There was someone else; a man Annette preferred, was in love with, a younger man, Sian suspected, and probably one without much money if he was so jealous of William Cassidy.

‘And then this morning he rang me,’ Annette whispered, her voice thick with choked tears.

‘He?’

‘Rick. This other man.’

‘What did he say?’

The tears were running down Annette’s face now. ‘That he hoped I’d be happy, but Cass could never love me the way he did. He sounded so unhappy, then he rang off in the middle of saying something, and I got scared. What if he does something stupid? He wouldn’t, would he?’

She looked beseechingly at Sian, who soothed her. ‘I’m sure he won’t.’ Shrewdly, Sian asked, ‘Does he live in London?’

Startled, Annette nodded. ‘However did you guess that?’

‘It wasn’t difficult,’ Sian said, amused. ‘But you know, you can’t just leave your bridegroom standing at the altar.’ Her green eyes focused commandingly on the other girl’s face. ‘You must ring the church and explain. We’ll stop at the next telephone box we see.’

Annette sighed heavily, but agreed. Sian smiled at her, then got out her suitcase, opened it and hunted for a clean pair of jeans and a clean shirt. Annette changed among the crowding trees; it took her quite a while, and Sian suspected she was crying too much to be deft-fingered, but she left the girl alone while she herself thought through what she should do. Heaven had dropped a once-in-a-lifetime scoop into her lap. No reporter worth her salt could possibly let it get away. If she didn’t report this story, sooner or later the rest of the press would get on to it. William Cassidy was news. For all Sian knew, the press had already got the story—had Annette been missed yet? Had her father raised the alarm?

Annette came out of the trees, carrying her gown and veil over her arm, her white shoes clutched in one hand. She now looked very ordinary: a slim, athletic girl in jeans and a shirt. Sian wondered curiously what William Cassidy had fallen for in her. She was a nice enough girl and quite pretty, but there was nothing special about her.

Sian grimaced to herself as she thought that although the eyes of love were always blind to faults, they saw what everyone else had missed— the uniqueness of one human being.

As they drove on, Sian said, ‘Annette, I ought to tell you. I’m a journalist, and I was actually asked to cover your wedding.’

‘Oh, really? What a coincidence,’ Annette murmured, staring out of the window, chewing on her lower lip. Her voice was abstracted—had she really heard? Sian wondered, preparing to repeat her admission.

Annette broke in on her before she could get another word out. ‘Oh, look,’ she said, pointing. ‘A telephone.’

They were passing through a small village street; the telephone was outside a shop and Sian pulled up just beyond it. Annette sat, staring, her pale face a battleground.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘He might come to the phone. I couldn’t talk to him, really. He’s so… sometimes Cass scares me, he’s like lightning—you know the way it seems to be tearing the sky up? Blinding light, and a terrible violence. Cass is like that. He can be very polite and sweet, but underneath you always feel there’s this possible violence. Rick’s ordinary, like me, we suit each other because we’re the same. Rick isn’t rich, you know, he’s a salesman. He used to work for Cass, but he left when… when he walked out on me. He could see Cass liked me, at once.’ She turned big, puzzled eyes on Sian. ‘Why does he, though? I’ve never been able to understand that. Why does he want me? I’m not from his sort of class. And he’s had so many really beautiful women in his life. He didn’t marry any of them—so why me?’

‘It isn’t his feelings that matter, it’s yours,’ Sian said patiently. ‘So why don’t you just ring your home and tell your Dad? Or ring the church and tell the Vicar? You must do something, Annette. You can’t leave them all in a state of utter ignorance. They might get the police.’