White Wedding (21 page)

They called in at the farm shop on the way back to the cottages to stock up on supplies. Bel nibbled on all the free samples of bread and cheese on the counter while she waited
for Dan to pay for his goods.

‘I don’t think I have met anyone who eats as much as you,’ he marvelled. ‘How do you stay so thin? If you turned sideways, you’d disappear.’

‘I’m not usually
this
thin. I’ve lost a lot of weight recently through . . . circumstances. But I am lucky with my metabolism,’ said Bel, mid-munch.
‘I’m making the best of it because I know that one day I’ll wake up, eat a cornflake and put on twelve stone.’

‘I like a woman with some meat on her bones myself,’ winked Dan.

‘I’ll give you a call when I’m forty,’ Bel said through a mouthful of Hawes Wensleydale. ‘The years will have caught up with me then.’

‘It’s a deal. But only if you bring mucho chocolate with you,’ said Dan, opening the shop door for her.

Max nibbled on her lunchtime sandwich and flicked through the glossy magazine. There was a feature about women’s lips. The main picture was of a mouth that made Mick
Jagger’s look like a pencil line. It was painted sex-red and sparkled like a disco ball. It was a mouth that a gypsy bride would be proud of.

‘Wow,’ gasped Max and she whistled, imagining her own lips twinkling in the church like twin rubies. She was in the grip of a wedding-obsession vice now and her inner radar was
constantly on the lookout for embellishments for her big day. She knew she shouldn’t, she knew that Stuart had forbidden it, but she simply couldn’t help herself. Her insides were
rebelling against all the spartan plans – like a woman on a diet stuffing herself full of Star Bars. She had to add those lips to her ever-growing list of must-haves.

Jess entered with a coffee and a plate of biscuits.

‘Hi, boss,’ she said in her usual cheery way, then she looked over Max’s shoulder to see what she was reading. ‘Wow’ was her verdict also.

‘Look at that lippy. Isn’t it fabulous?’ Max held up the page for her to see it more closely.

‘That is major,’ Jess said.

‘How do they get that effect?’

‘It’s glitter that you paint on to your lipstick. Barry M do it. I think it’s really meant for your eyes but you can put it on your mouth as well. Comes with a sort of top
coat, as far as I know.’

‘Well, that’s me heading to Boots right now,’ said Max. ‘Sorry to waste that coffee, Jess, but I don’t think I can wait.’

‘Oh it’s fine,’ said Jess, flapping her hand. She was used to Max’s inability to ignore an impulse. ‘I’ll make you a fresh one when you get back.’

Max grabbed her coat and an updated vision of herself drifted into her brain as she stood in the lift: a gypsy bride with sparkling lips. She wondered if she should paint her toenails to
match.

They left each other at their respective doors with a mutual ‘see you later’. Dan was burning to write, which he welcomed because after Cathy’s betrayal
he’d wondered if he would ever feel passion for anything ever again. Bel was bored within three minutes of the door shutting behind her. She killed time by reading her book and doing a bit
more of the jigsaw. Then, at seven o’clock, Dan Regent knocked on her door.

‘I seem to have bought too much cheese. Would you care to let me repay you for lunch by sharing cheese toasties and tomato soup with me and indulging in another Ricky Gervais
film?’

Bel found she really had to throttle back on sounding too keen as she said yes, she would like that very much.

‘I thought you were going to work,’ said Bel, dipping the edge of her toastie into her mug of accompanying Heinz tomato soup.

‘I did. A full day’s word count in a few hours. I think I’ve been bitten by a Bronte muse,’ said Dan, swigging down a large mouthful of red wine.

He was burning logs in the stove. They were glowing gently with the odd lick of flame and adding a warm glow to the room. An unbidden memory blindsided her of being little, in a cosy pink
dressing gown, and sitting on a sofa with Faye eating buttered toast. It must have been her birthday because she always had new pyjamas, a new dressing gown and new slippers for her birthday. There
was soot on Faye’s face because she had just stoked up the fire and Bel remembered giggling at it and preferring not to tell Faye that she looked silly. Bel felt a wave of guilt at her
meanness – twenty-plus years too late.

‘Penny for them?’ Dan asked.

‘They’re not worth that much,’ said Bel.

‘Try me,’ Dan crunched down on his second toastie.

‘I was thinking about my stepmother,’ Bel confessed. ‘The fire jolted a memory.’

‘Was she an evil stepmother? Beat you senseless and forbade you from going to the ball?’

‘Actually, no, she was always very kind to me. Always.’

‘I sense a “but”,’ Dan topped up Bel’s wine. It was called Old Vine and tasted like its name – rich and mature and fruity.

‘But I never managed to love her.’ Bel felt another wave of guilt at saying the words aloud, as if Faye might hear them too.

‘Why was that?’

‘I always felt that Faye had supplanted my mum,’ nodded Bel. ‘But mum died when I was a baby. Faye came along five years later. She never . . .’

‘Never?’ prompted Dan eventually.

‘She never forced a mother status on me. She always told me that Mum was a star in heaven and was the one that twinkled the most when I looked up at the sky, as if she was winking at
me.’

‘That’s cute,’ said Dan.

‘But if I ever felt that I wanted to call her “Mum”, then she would be so happy.’

‘But you never did.’

‘No.’

‘She sounds a nice lady,’ said Dan gently, hearing a wobble appear in Bel’s voice.

‘She’s a really lovely person. Dad adores her.’

Suddenly, the way she had treated Faye over the years, freezing her out, resenting her, was too uncomfortable to think about. She reached over to her wine and glugged a throatful.

‘What did your family think of your fiancé?’

‘They liked him. At least, I think they did. They welcomed him into the family, anyway. Then again, Dad and Faye are so bloody nice I think they’d have welcomed Fred West into the
family if I loved him and he made me happy. What did your family think of Cathy?’

‘Everyone loved Cathy,’ said Dan, blowing the air out of his cheeks. ‘She had a fantastic ability to charm the birds out of the trees.’

Bel felt her nose wrinking up. She didn’t like the sound of Cathy at all. She couldn’t imagine her now without thinking of her in a billowing white nightshirt, flying over the moors
and smashing up nice men’s hearts. Bel wondered what she found in the other man that she didn’t find in Dan. He was great fun, good-looking, courteous. Even if she had once thought he
was a psychopath.

‘What was the other guy like?’

‘Ex-model, lantern jaw, Porsche-driver, gym-fanatic, fellow non-chocolate eater. They make a very beautiful couple. What was the other woman like?’

‘A swan,’ said Bel. ‘Spoiled, golden, leggy, sexually alluring, non-chocolate eater also. Although when we were kids, she used to mainline Mars bars.’

‘I think we possibly both had a lucky escape,’ said Dan, reaching down behind the sofa arm and pulling up the biggest bar of chocolate Bel had ever seen. ‘Care for some Mrs
Fairfax Fruit and Nut?’

After three glasses of wine, Bel had an unexpected moment of clarity, noticing how much closer Dan was sitting to her since the film had begun. His arm was touching hers, the hairs on his
tickled slightly when he shifted. She loved the cinema, but there was never anyone to accompany her and she didn’t like the idea of going there alone for fear of looking as if she’d
been stood up. Richard didn’t like films. If they ever went out it was to serious networking dinners or for showy, expensive meals. Thinking about it, it was one of the many points on which
they differed. But that hadn’t really mattered because she had always believed the adage ‘opposites attract’. He wouldn’t have dreamed of looking round the Bronte parsonage
or even stepping foot in a café that sold Isabella’s Chilli Con Carne.

Actually, Richard was a bit of a boring bastard, thinking about it.

For all their reserves of money, the Candy family had always enjoyed simple pleasures: fish and chip suppers, looking through Argos catalogues, hot buttered toast for tea and fresh, new
nightclothes . . .

‘I can’t believe that two gorgeous people like us are cuckolds, can you?’ said Dan, turning to Bel and disgruntledly placing two hands on his hips as the film credits
rolled.

‘I’m not gorgeous,’ said Bel. ‘I’m far too short to be gorgeous.’

‘Fair point,’ Dan conceded. Bel chuckled, picked up a cushion and smacked him around the head with it.

Then Dan picked up a cushion from his side and hit Bel on the arm with it.

‘Ouch,’ she said.

‘I barely touched you,’ Dan returned. ‘I think you’ve been injured enough recently.’

‘Liar. You hit me like this,’ said Bel, and she belted him hard with the cushion.

‘No, I did not. I hit you like this,’ Dan’s cushion swung round again. Bel yelped dramatically and hit him back.

‘This means war,’ said Dan.

Bel lifted her arm to swing the cushion and Dan tickled her underneath it. Then they were rolling around on the sofa. And then Dan was holding her face in his hands and his lips were brushing
against hers.

Then they both sprang apart.

‘Oh no, rebound alert,’ gasped Bel.

‘You’re telling me. Most obvious fall in the book.’ Dan launched himself into a standing position and started pacing up and down in front of the fire. ‘That was so
close.’

‘I’d definitely better go back to Charlotte,’ laughed Bel. ‘That’s my cue. Nearly snogging an ex-serial killer. Ugh.’

‘Yeah, ugh,’ shuddered Dan with the affected playground disgust of an eight-year-old boy.

‘I’m saving you from a fate worse than death. I’m far too hard to love.’

‘I think you’d be very easy to love, Miss Bel,’ said Dan Regent with too much tenderness in his voice for comfort. Bel felt alarm bells go off deep inside her. She was too
vulnerable for this and had to leave – quickly.

‘Dream on, Doctor. I have a heart of stone,’ she sneered, injecting some attitude into her voice to mask the fact that her heart felt about as rock-like as an Angel Delight.

‘Yeah, go before we both do something we really regret. We would only have ended up in bed,’ said Dan with forced casualness. ‘You’d obviously scream out my name fifteen
times and then be unable to look at me in the morning.’

‘You wish,’ smiled Bel, pulling her keys out of her jeans pocket. She lifted her eyes to his and saw the very wounded man behind the jokey exterior. Spending the night with him was
something she would imagine in bed, alone, in safety. ‘Thank you for another lovely evening, Dan.’

‘Don’t forget to thank Ricky too,’ Dan reminded her, gesturing towards the TV.

‘Thanks, Ricky,’ said Bel.

She looked up at the nice kind face of Dr Dan and thought that Cathy must be a fool. She didn’t move away as his hand came out and gently tweaked the tip of her nose.

‘Goodnight, Miss Bel. Thanks for sharing my cheese. Oh God, that sounds so wrong.’

Bel chuckled. ‘Goodnight, Dr Dan.’ She held up her fingers in a two:two formation. ‘Live long and prosper.’

Charlotte was very very cold when Bel walked in and switched on the light. She touched her nose where Dr Dan’s fingers had landed and felt more alone than she could ever remember feeling
before in her whole life.

Nan had a good talk to the lovely angel with flame-red hair in the middle of the night. She had tried to whisper so Susan wouldn’t hear. Susan would only have said the
angel didn’t exist, but Nan knew without any doubt that she did. The angel didn’t talk back to her physically, but Nan
felt
her answers.

She and the angel had a lot in common. They’d both known what it was like to be locked into an unhappy marriage and also the joy of finding their one true love. The angel said that Nan
wasn’t to worry about her family when she was gone, and she knew what Nan was especially concerned about. Nan wanted to see her granddaughter happily married before she went; she needed to
know that she had found her soulmate, her
Jack
. She hadn’t seen that much of Glyn but it was obvious that he adored Violet, worshipped the ground she walked on, even; but he
wasn’t someone that Nan would have picked for her lovely girl. She wanted Violet to be looked after, not
do
the looking after.

The angel had smiled at her and said something quite odd: ‘You will send him back to her.’ When Nan asked what that meant, the angel just repeated the words: ‘You will send him
back to her.’ And though Nan hadn’t a clue what she was on about, she trusted the angel enough to know that she was telling her that everything would be all right.

Bel woke up suddenly just as Dan was leaning over her and about to kiss her. She sat up in bed and patted her racing heart because that dream had felt so real she could almost
taste his lips as they touched hers. She had gone to bed thinking about him, and he had been in her thoughts all night. Now she had woken up annoyed that her dream had ended. She was heading for
trouble because she was wise enough to recognize how her poor battered heart was reaching out to the warmth and kindness within its immediate radius – Dan Regent – as he was reaching
out to her. They were two crazy mixed-up people incapable of making sensible decisions. It was time for her to rejoin the real world before she made any more mistakes – or got hurt again.

She washed and dressed and gathered all her stuff together, packing it into her case. Hearing a clang she looked out of the bedroom window to see that Dan was bending down by her car and taking
off her tyre. As if he sensed he was being watched, he turned his head upwards and waved. He had such a kind face when he smiled, even if it was a bit on the saturnine Heathcliff side when he
didn’t. She laughed to herself thinking about the concept of a ‘nice Heathcliff’. That was the trouble with
Wuthering Heights
, in her opinion: all the characters were too
polarized. Edgar was so caring he was wimpy, Heathcliff was a total bastard and Cathy was a cow. Give her
Jane Eyre
any time, with her perfectly imperfect characters: the feisty, lovely
heroine and the manly, passionate – but ultimately decent – Rochester. Yes, Dan was definitely more Rochester than Heathcliff. He had gentler, warmer eyes than Heathcliff could ever
possess, even if they were almost black. They were eyes that could make a woman melt seeing them first thing in the morning, turning to hers on the pillow. Bel blew out two large cheekfuls of air
and shook her head. The sooner she left the better. She was, after all, a married woman.