The sun always shone in her wedding dream, nothing ever went wrong or was overlooked. There were no last-minute nerves, no bride jilted at the altar, no hung-over groom who could barely stand, no bickering amongst the guests, no best man getting drunk and throwing up in the shrubbery or getting off with the bridesmaids in the bushes.
At the centre of this wedding perfection would be Rachel and the love of her life shimmying elegantly across the dance floor, fairy lights twinkling, music playing, her friends and family looking on with indulgent tears in their eyes as they watched the happy couple perform their first dance – the first dance of the rest of their lives together.
Over the years the shape and style of the wedding dress in the dream might have altered with the change in taste and fashion, along with the groom – Leonardo DiCaprio had been her long-standing fantasy husband, followed by Keanu Reeves and Jude Law – but the one essential ingredient that was always the same was Linston End. It had started as a joke with Alastair and Orla that that was where she would one day have her wedding reception, but now she couldn’t imagine her big day taking place anywhere else.
‘What do you suppose it is that Uncle Alastair wants to tell us?’
At Jenna’s question, Rachel opened her eyes. ‘I don’t know, but Mum reckons he might have met somebody while he was away.’
‘Mine said the same.’
‘Do you believe it?’
Jenna shook her head. ‘He and Orla were such an amazing couple together, I can’t picture him with anybody else, can you?’
‘No more than I could imagine my dad with another woman, or yours.’
They both winced at the thought.
‘Then what else could it be that he wants to share with us all this weekend? What couldn’t he just say on the phone to our parents for instance?’ asked Jenna.
With a shrug of her shoulders, Rachel said, ‘You’re the one with the brains; I’ll leave it to you to come up with something. I have more important things to do.’
‘Such as?’
For answer, Rachel held up her mobile in front of her face, and instead of sucking in her cheeks as she normally did for a selfie, she smiled the biggest smile she could. ‘I’m going to send this to Paul and see if he notices my lovely shiny white teeth.’
‘What’s he up to this weekend while you’re away?’ Jenna enquired, after Rachel had shown her the photo and hit send.
‘Wishing he was with me, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Jenna, ‘how could he not?’
Seconds later Rachel’s mobile pinged with a text. But it wasn’t from Paul; it was from her brother, Callum.
Chapter Six
Twenty minutes after Callum had texted his sister, he was at the station waiting for Rachel and Jenna’s train to arrive.
Rachel would hate him coming for her in this beaten-up old van from the boatyard, but it was the best he could do in the circumstances. His Porsche Boxter, which was nearly as old as the van, and with almost as many miles on the clock, wouldn’t have accommodated the three of them, so Rachel would just have to grin and bear it.
With time to kill, he began idly to tidy the worst of the mess in the van, shoving what he could in the glove compartment. What he had left over – old newspapers and angling magazines, a broken Maglite, a collection of tools that should be in the toolbox in the back, a number of ropes, which he coiled, a pair of gloves, and the shrivelled remains of an apple core – he dumped into a dusty bin bag he’d unearthed from under the junk.
With a grubby bit of cloth he gave the bench seat and the dashboard a wipe, acknowledging that he was doing it not for his sister’s benefit, but for Jenna’s. The stupid thing was, Jenna probably wouldn’t object to a bit of mess, and if she did mind, she wouldn’t say anything. Unlike Rachel, Jenna had a filtering system and didn’t go out of her way to cause offence. She could be direct when she chose, very direct, but never offensive.
As young children they’d been the best of friends, but as is often the way, once they’d hit adolescence things changed between them, mainly because Callum found himself in the awkward position of wanting to be more than just friends.
He’d once kissed her, having spent days meticulously planning how to go about it. They’d gone out sailing together, just the two of them, and after suggesting they moor up and eat the picnic they’d brought with them, he’d summoned his courage. Thinking it better to kiss her before they’d eaten their cheese and pickle sandwiches, he hastily pressed his mouth against hers and kept it there for a couple of seconds, not really sure what to do next. Very calmly she had pushed him away and set about unwrapping their sandwiches, telling him she didn’t think it would be a very good idea for him to do that again.
It was an example of how direct she could be, but perfectly pleasant at the same time. Even so, his embarrassment had been acute – he’d been all of fourteen years old and Jenna a year younger. He was suddenly concerned that she might tell Rachel, knowing that if she did, he’d never hear the last of it. But Jenna kept his first clumsy attempt at seduction to herself, and for that he was forever grateful.
Her discretion became the bedrock of their friendship; he knew that whatever he told her, she would keep to herself, and vice versa. He regarded the trust between them as an echo of the mutual and lifelong trust that existed between their fathers and Alastair.
A lot of water had passed under the bridge since he was that fumbling gauche boy; a fair number of girls too had come and gone. His track record was impressive if one judged these things on quantity, but he scored no points for longevity. In that he was an abject failure.
He’d be thirty-six in the autumn and that seemed to be a critical age in the eyes of many – his mother for one – who regarded it as an age when ‘settling down’ should have kicked in by now.
Girlfriends had accused him of being afraid of commitment, an accusation he refuted. What he was far more afraid of was being stuck with the wrong girl, a girl who wasn’t prepared to accept him as he was, flaws and all. Was it possible though? Could two people genuinely coexist without the urge to change the other?
