FEBRUARY
Chapter 1
Friday, Valentine’s Day.
The Harbourside, St Aidan, Cornwall.
Early birds and aftershocks.
It’s a boy!
There are certain significant moments in life you know you’re going to relive again and again. As those three small words bounce off my phone screen and resonate around inside my skull, I’m on the edge of a huge crowd of people with one of my oldest friends, Poppy, at my elbow, but I couldn’t feel any more alone. It’s the sting of the salty wind on my cheeks that’s being etched on my memory, the blackness of the water lapping against the quay, the dark lines of boat masts etched against the sky. The curve of lights out around the bay edge.
Even when you know a metaphorical tidal wave is coming your way, it’s still hard to predict how it will demolish you. I expected this would blow my heart apart, but it actually hits way lower. It’s nothing like the thousand tiny glass shards in my chest I was braced for, more a boot in my bowel.
All the same, I’d still rather know than not.
When your closest friend and business partner accidentally hooks up with your fiancé – well,myfiancé – then they decide that’s how it should have been all along. And then seal the deal with a baby.
This baby.
Let’s just say, this text from Lucy, our maternity-cover office assistant, is the latest in a year of seismic shocks.
In case you hadn’t already guessed, this is all playing out in tiny St Aidan on the furthest edge of Cornwall where the land meets the sea. Where the higgledy-piggledy cottages that start at the edge of the cobbles stack up the hillside in shadowy lines behind me. It’s somehow ironic that we’re out on this freezing February night waiting for a firework display to begin; that this tiny baby who’s turned my life upside down for the last few months has now claimed the Brides by the Sea Valentine’s Day celebrations as his own too.
Poppy is next to me, pulling her Barbour jacket closed against the slice of the wind, stamping her feet as we wait. ‘Everything okay, Milla? You’re lucky to find a signal down here.’
I’m watching the strings of lights in the distance along the prom being lashed by a gale. Pushing my phone back into my pocket, I say, ‘Phoebe’s had a boy.’
‘The baby’s here already?’ Poppy’s eyebrows shoot upwards in horror the same way they have ever since we played together as kids growing up in Rose Hill village, a few miles inland from here. ‘But first babies never arrive on time! The last two weeks waiting like a beached whale are what prepares you for everything ahead.’ She had her son Gabe two years ago, so she’s an expert. She’s also enjoying a rare night out on her own, but seeing as she’s Brides by the Sea’s cake baker, this counts as work rather than pleasure.
‘Phoebe won’t put up with lateness, especially not from a baby.’ Realistically she was never going to let herself get to the size of an elephant. Even with something as unpredictable as childbirth, she’s the kind of person who plans scrupulously and always comes up smelling of roses. And she’s good at it too. Like popping her baby out on Valentine’s Day, exactly a year to the day after she and my ex, Ben, got together – it takes a special kind of very dedicated control-freak to pull that off.
‘Christmas effing crackers, that wasn’t in the plan was it?’
I’m shaking my head at Poppy. ‘I haven’t even turned the bed down at my Airbnb yet.’ Okay, admittedly I’ve been at the wedding shop catching up with everyone since I arrived earlier this afternoon. But somehow, I’d counted on having more time to settle in. Get myself ready. Put my hard hat on.
It’s odd to think that this time last year I still had a fiancé and the flat we shared. Then, somewhere around midnight, my whole life plummeted to oblivion – in aTitanic-hits-the-iceberg kind of way. I’ll save the goriest details for later. But, just like the iceberg, I did not see this one coming. I’d been Phoebe’s head bridesmaid when she’d got married six years earlier and our business had sprung from us organising her wedding, so it was natural that I’d support her when her husband Harry walked out. And when she was suddenly left without a partner for the black-tie Valentine’s ball we’d paid a fortune for her to go to, I didn’t think twice about lending her my fiancé Ben. They were my two most trusted people, in business and in life. The last thing I imagined was them ending up in bed together when she’d been so meticulous about showing me the separate rooms on the booking.
What’s the old saying? One kiss is all it takes. Admittedly it was a bit more than that. A lot more. Enough to throw a wrecking ball through my relationship with Ben. But we were all very adult about it. Or at least, they were. However much I kicked and yelled, it wasn’t going to help – the damage was done, what I’d had was already gone. He moved his stuff around the corner into her place. And we went on from there.
But after those long years literally spending all my waking hours scrambling to make a go of our Brides Go West wedding company, and borrowing to the hilt, I couldn’t afford to let the business slide and lose that as well. But it was more than that. As my life imploded and my self-esteem went with it, Brides Go West became my one refuge. I might feel like a worm in every other area, but an award-winning business lets me hold my head high. Phoebe and Ben might have whipped every other metaphorical carpet out from under me, but I refuse to let them run away with the business too.
So, for the last nine months I’ve watched Phoebe’s bump growing across the office desk like a slow-motion horror movie. In the end I decided if I actually had to be there for the birth, my screams were going to be louder than the ones coming from the labour ward. So after a whole year of gritting my teeth so hard they’re stumps of their former selves, I left town for a couple of weeks around the baby’s due date.
Poppy’s arm slides around my shoulder. ‘You do know you are worth more than this?’ Her voice is low in my ear. ‘It might feel like the end of the world now …’
I’ve heard it so many times I can finish it myself. ‘… but it will get better.’ The problem is, deep down, I can’t imagine ever getting to a place where there isn’t a stone in my gut and my chest isn’t aching. When I can look at a wedding dress and not have my mouth fill with the taste of sour lemons. Which isn’t the most practical thing to happen when I write about the damn things most days on our blog.
Poppy lets out a groan. ‘Sorry, it’s not the best timing, but you’re about to meet Gary and Ken. They’re doing a great job giving out flyers for our Brides by the Sea cocktail event later, but they’re insatiably curious too.’ She pulls a face. ‘Remember what it’s like in small-town St Aidan?’
I grimace. ‘Where everybody knows, and everybody cares?’ It’s very different from Bristol where I’ve been happily anonymous for the last twelve years. As a teenager growing up here, I dodged the worst of the spotlight because my mum was ill and I was her carer. When you barely leave the house, you become pretty invisible. But even if I don’t recognise many of the faces in the crowd here tonight, the reason I’ve run back here now is to be with my oldest friends.
As Poppy and I are both in the wedding business, we’re often in touch. And as my life unravelled, Poppy’s the one who’s been there for me, texting and messaging. And she was the one who literally saved my sanity when she suggested I take this working holiday. I know if Ben were the last guy in the world on a desert island, I’d actually have to make a boat and leave. And that’s saying a lot from me, who came bottom of the class in woodwork. But however much I don’t want Ben anymore, this baby moment is still so monumental it’s a relief to be three hours down the road.
‘So who are Ken and Gary?’ So far as I can see they have great taste in tight, spangly shorts and are experts at elbowing their way through a crowd while rocking their Cupid costumes.
‘They run a highly decorated local B&B, and they’re also stars of the Hungry Shark’s karaoke nights and the Chamber of Commerce.’
