‘I know.’ She shrugged, taking the smallest step towards Monty and stopping when she saw him flinch. ‘Only, you need a passport to get on a plane, and Radia’s has mysteriously vanished.’
‘It has, has it?’ Monty wanted to smile, but he stopped himself. ‘So you’re… still here.’
Joy spread her fingers. ‘Ta-dah!’ Her awkward smile fell into sheepish shame. ‘Listen, I—’ she began, cutting off Monty who’d also scrambled for words at the same moment. ‘Sorry, you go ahead,’ she told him.
‘What I was going to say was, uh…’ He stopped, just to look at her, letting the amazement strike him full force. ‘I can’t believe you’re still here.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought I wasn’t going to see you again and…’
Joy’s smile broke out, but she whisked it away, biting her lips shut.
‘I was going to call you this morning,’ he went on, ‘but then all the glasses smashed and the cake got ruined…’
Joy tipped her head, not understanding.
‘I wanted to reach you and say sorry again, make you listen. Beg you, really, to forgive me, but by then I was sure you’d left, so…’
‘Stop,’ said Joy, and Monty looked like his heart was on its very last beat. He had his hand to his chest. She stepped closer still. ‘I’m the one that’s sorry,’ she told him. ‘I expected you to understand what was going on with my folks when I hadn’t even explained it to you. I was angry because I was panicking, and I chucked you out when I really didn’t want you to go. I wanted to tell you all this down on the beach, but you looked so decided, so tired and hurt, like you were done with me and all my drama.’
Now it was Monty stepping forward, almost in touching distance. He watched Joy’s eyes scan over his tie and collar, up to his hair and back to his mouth, where she kept her gaze as he spoke.
‘You have every excuse to behave however you want to when all you’ve had is unkindness and gaslighting and let-downs. And you’re right. Iwasdecided, down on the beach that day. I’d decided I had no right whatsoever to get involved in your life when you had a child to look after. Not if I couldn’t be careful with that child’s safety, not if I made their mum unhappy, even for a minute. I decided I’d let you go for your own peace of mind.’
Joy was shaking her head but he pressed on.
‘But even though I’d decided, I still wanted to come to you in Londonsobadly.’ His voice shook at this. ‘And I seriously didn’t want it to be the end of us, not when we’d only just met, when we were just starting something. Agoodthing, I thought.’
‘Itwasgood,’ Joy broke in. ‘I loved it! I want more of it. I want more of you!’ She was breathless now and there was a light in her eyes that told Monty it was all true.
He took the last step that closed the gap between them. ‘I’m so sorry I made things difficult for you with your family.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ she told him, and Monty was raising his eyebrows in surprise and taking her hands in his when the sound of footsteps and hoof-clops stopped their words.
They both turned to see Mushy Peas’s fuzzy nose poking around the corner followed by Mr Moke, red-faced after hurrying down the slope.
‘’Ave you got the bricks yet?’ the stable man said, not remotely aware he was interrupting the most important moment in Monty Bickleigh’s life.
Chapter Thirty-three
It turns out all you need for a wedding to be a big success is people in love and the promises they make; everything else is just the icing on the cake. Which, incidentally, Jude had at last.
Mr Crawley emerged from the kitchen of the Big House carrying his simple sponge cake in a thin coating of fresh butter icing in the ‘nude’ style he’d seen in Jude’s bridal magazines. Leonid had cut a cluster of baby’s breath and white alstroemeria from the gardens to top the whole thing off and nobody had minded one bit that there wasn’t a fruit cake. Radia Pearl announced that, ‘Nobody likes fruit cake anyway!’ and was first in line for a slice.
She hadn’t waited for a wedding invitation on discovering there was anactual donkeyin the bookshop garden. It had been all her Aunt Patti could do to get her into her party clothes and jelly shoes with her hair brushed before they all headed up the slope, following in the wake of Mushy Peas, who did a grand job of transporting two pannier baskets full of bricks to the parterre garden behind the Big House, where Monty set up his barbeque.
Izaak had the wood and coals ready for them when they arrived, and by the time the bride and groom were on their second glasses of bubbly and had caught up with all their guests in the ballroom, the fire was lit beneath the grills and Monty was rolling up his sleeves ready to make the biggest seafood barbeque Clove Lore had ever seen.
The sky had cleared over the blue Atlantic as the smoke rose in white curls and the wedding guests spilled out into the gardens. Mr Moke ran donkey rides around the lawns for the little ones and Finan drove off in Minty’s Discovery, taking the long way round to the Siren, to bring his speaker system up from the pub’s function suite.
Before long, there was music filling the gardens, and everyone had a glass in their hand and a smile on their faces. Elliot and Jude danced under the spreading oaks and kissed and whispered.
Radia found her friends, the Crocombe kids, once more and they were running around the low hedges of the parterre maze and screaming with happiness. Patti and Joy watched them play, sipping Prosecco.
‘This is better than installing cables in a Lisbon office block?’ Patti remarked.
‘Thank goodness Gaz stepped in and took that job,’ Joy replied.
‘And we have a few days’ breathing space staying at the pub?’ said Patti.
‘Yep, before we go back to London.’ There was a hint of something sorrowful in Joy’s voice as she watched Monty, very much in his element, turning and brushing, basting and tasting, at his barbeque. ‘And you go back to…?’ Joy prompted.
