Now he’d got her attention. ‘The one with the lift?’ When he nodded, she became worried for his bride.
‘We did that over and over again in the water for months and still couldn’t get it right. Lu-Lu’s not even a swimmer.’ The only thing this bride was likely to dive for was bling in a jewellery store sale.
‘She’ll be fine. I’m super-coordinated, and Lu-Lu’s a little less top-heavy, shall we say?’ He slapped her on the back with a laugh as someone came to tell him he should get in place for the ceremony.
***
Everyone gathered in the drawing room of Hetherington HQ. The attendees sat on white chairs with giant pink bows, awaiting the bride’s arrival. When Nic took his place next to her, Aria stared straight ahead.
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she hissed.
‘Then don’t talk. I’m here to watch the ceremony,’ he insisted.
As they waited for the bride, Aria suspected their awkward silence was fuelling interest, so she put a smile on her face and pointed to the wedding cake – an intricate artwork of edible caravans, sheep and people set in a confectionery version of Inglemere. ‘See those tiny sugarpaste figures? They represent us – the residents of this town – getting on with our little lives, believing Inglemere will be ours forever, or at least a gift to be passed to future generations. And then people like you turn up and populate that lovely green hillside with houses you don’t really want or need. You pollute the air with emissions as you drive or fly in for a week or two a year, leaving the properties empty the rest of the time. You push up the property prices as land is more scarce and houses for normal people are less affordable, so the young people depart along with you, to cheaper towns and cities. And soon, a thriving community starts to die and there are so many new homes in front of the lake no one can see it anymore. The farmers take the lambs off to market as there’s no green pasture left, while you put pretty pictures of Herdwick sheep on your walls in your primary homes to remind you of the once green and pleasant land you coveted while you moan about not being able to get up to Inglemere because the motorways areclogged or you are too busy paying two mortgages and double taxes.
‘You lied to me from the beginning, Nic Castle. You needed my land for your marina access road. Everyone is a random tiny figure to you, to be repositioned at a whim. All they have to do is get in your way on a bank holiday and boom – they’re history! Don’t get me wrong – I played my part in our story. I signed on the metaphorical dotted line willingly. I mean, you even produced a contract at one point. And while neither of us expected a fake engagement to lead to a real wedding like this, you didn’t even try to keep it professional and stop something else forming between us.’ She touched her heart for a second before dropping her hand back to her side. ‘You were the one in the driving seat. You made promises you didn’t keep, took things too far and didn’t uphold your side of the deal. Here’s Lu-Lu now. I’m moving over there for a better view of marriage,’ she told him, standing and making her way past a row of guests to the far edge of the room.
She’d said her piece, but it didn’t feel as good as she’d expected.
56
Nic sat frozen to his chair. Her words had been both on the mark and way off beam. Hehadgone too far. He had broken their agreement. He had let her down. But he hadn’t parachuted in to destroy the community, seduce the women or drive out the young. Maybe he’d come for some of the wrong reasons, although they felt right at the time, but it wasn’t a hit-and-run. Somewhere along the line, this place had grabbed his heart. Or, more to the point, she had. And he’d hoped to stick around. The air in this room was suffocating, so he slipped off his jacket and put it under his chair, examining the wedding cake Aria had compared them all to. Could he stomach a day of small talk, dancing and eating mediocre food with people he didn’t know? Maybe he could persuade Cal out from behind the bar, but he doubted it – the man looked swamped and Nic wasn’t in any mood to help. While everyone else watched the bride come in, he sneaked a glance at the woman who’d stolen his heart. She was even more beautiful in the flesh than in his thoughts. Her neck was flushed, and he wondered if that was him or the heat. Or perhaps she’d had champagne. When the vows were over, the couple mingledand chatted. Nic stood awkwardly, wondering when he could leave as Justin loudly offered to give any interested parties a tour of the mobile home site later. He noticed Aria was pinned in by Justin’s mother, who looked very animated as she gestured his way. For a moment, he worried the fake relationship had been rumbled, but then, it didn’t really matter anymore, did it? His reputation was probably torn to shreds by now after his dad’s meddling.
Justin broke into his thoughts by announcing to the room they had a surprise up their sleeves. ‘Lu-Lu is nervous and wants to get this over so she can have a drink with dinner,’ he brayed. ‘We’ve been practising a dance for weeks and would like to perform it for you today. I can only hope, for the sake of the people at the far side of the room, that we pull it off.’
Nic didn’t care enough for the couple to observe their first dance, so slipped out onto the patio where a small terrace led to the beach. The whitewashed walls of the house looked pin-neat in the afternoon light. This is where the Hetherington family had started out, far away from Inglemere, on the Morecambe Bay estuary.Not so local, then. He was surprised they still kept it as their headquarters, given they claimed to be stalwarts of a Cumbrian town.
On the beach, he was lifting his phone out of his pocket to call a cab when he noticed a young lad throwing a toy for Tiger to fetch. True to form, the dog proudly brought it back, dropping the object at the boy’s feet. The teen flung it further and the pug chased after it. Nic couldn’t help smiling to himself as he recognised the unfortunate rubber duck. Then, with an overarm throw a cricketer would be proud of,the lad threw the toy to the edge of the water where a wave carried it out a little. The dog stopped there but the duck floated further out. Nic had secured his cab, but something made him stop and watch. His own distrust of water perhaps, or a curiosity about what might happen next. Tiger went in. Nic expected the pug to shiver, turn and come straight back, but the toy floated out some more and Tiger committed too. His backside went under as he doggy-paddled with his front legs, his head just about above the water. He swam out, or more accurately splashed around, in the direction of the rubber toy. As the duck bobbed to one side of him, the dog opened his mouth to grab it, but missed. He tried again, failing to cram it in. The third time he was lucky, but the duck dragged him down once he got his jaw around it. Or maybe the current did – either way, he appeared to be struggling. Nic watched as the poor dog tried to right himself in the water but went under again. While he managed to hold his nose out of the water for intervals of a second or two, his legs were fully submerged along with most of his body. The boy was calling to the dog, and Nic opened his mouth to call for Aria. But the pug wasn’t made for swimming, and he disappeared completely. Heart thumping, Nic willed Tiger to surface again. Adrenaline coursed through his body as it had last year. But this time he acted, throwing off his shoes, running down the length of the beach to the sea and plunging in.
57
Aria had known what was coming. As the amp boomed out the opening notes of a tune fromDirty Dancing, she became frozen to the spot in a kind of strangled empathy. She was appalled Justin was determined to do this while his bride looked like she wanted her stilettoes to sprout wings and carry her away. People clapped along to the first bars of the song. The moment was a juggernaut that could not be stopped as Lu-Lu struck a pose and flashed a fake sultry look at Justin, who ran a hand through gelled hair. Striding over to her, he put a hand on her waist, lightly touching the seam of her dress and dipping her backwards. Then he swung her round, silky dress flowing as a guest audibly sighed. Soon they were switching between salsa and ridiculous synchronised swimming moves, holding their noses, stomping sidewards like crabs and doing an exaggerated breaststroke. Towards the end of the music, Aria tensed. She knew the exact moment Lu-Lu would be forced to jump into the air – the point where she’d often bottled it herself, but in the water not on a hard dancefloor. The bride mamboed towards her new husband like her life depended on it. He spread his legs to take her weight, andshe got ready to fly. Slipping slightly on the sprung floor, Lu-Lu took off with a fair bit of power and Justin played his part, catching her in mid-air. They’d done it! Aria cheered along with everyone else as her ex brandished the woman in white high above his head. Her dress draped around his tanned arms as she looked elated at what they had achieved. But just as everyone relaxed, Justin wobbled and took a few steps to rebalance them both. The bride dangled above the cake, before her new husband’s arms gave way. There was only one direction to go in now, and she prepared for it like a diver. Curling into a roll that turned her buttocks into weapons and her shoes into forward-firing armaments, Lu-Lu was propelled headlong into her own wedding cake and grunted on impact with the dense Madeira.
‘Nugh.’
After a collective gasp, a silence descended. Guests stood rooted to the spot or adjusting their cameras. A strangled laugh burst from the bride, as the horror sunk in. Aria didn’t like Lu-Lu, but didn’t hate her enough to see her crash and burn. Her white tulle dress oozed crushed grass and smashed-up mobile homes, but it was Justin’s lack of sympathy that shocked most. He was standing over his bride with a look of disgust on his face. The bride he’d just dropped in her own cake.
‘My mother paid six hundred pounds for that,’ everyone heard him say.
Aria moved to help Lu-Lu up, becoming distracted when Justin’s brother ran in through the patio doors. She could tell from his eyes there was something wrong as they darted around the room before landing on her.
58
Nic closed his eyes, and opened them again, swallowing another mouthful of salt. The cold had come quickly, flooding every extremity, but he was determined to push on. Having already destroyed the rest of Aria’s legacy, he wasn’t about to let the final gift from her dad perish too. His teeth chattered as his body temperature dropped further, and he stopped feeling his feet. Metres away and not coming any closer, Tiger was flailing badly, the toy no longer in his jaw. If dunked again, Nic feared the small dog’s lungs might be too full of water to keep going. By the time he finally reached the terrified creature, he was tiring himself. With one last burst of energy he grabbed Aria’s pet, spun around and started pushing back to the shore, until bam, a jolt of pain blasted through his core.
‘Fuck.’
His body tensed. He was feeling unnaturally chilly and clammy at the same time. Clutching his ribs, he tried hard to hold on to the dog, but his muscles spasmed and he struggled to breathe. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to make his hands work and tried desperately to keep hold of his rescue. His vision blurred and he couldn’t remember why he was wet.
59
Aria kicked off her borrowed shoes and barrelled into the sea. Something was very wrong. Neither Nic nor Tiger were good with water, and neither were doing very well out there now. As she approached them, swimming fast, she lifted her head to see Nic’s face contorting, his eyes glazed and unfocused.
‘Why am I…’ he started to say before the shivering took his away his voice.
‘You rescued him. Now I’m rescuing you.’ She shouted at a swimmer behind her to grab the dog. It took forever for them to move just a few metres, but bit by bit they crawled towards the shore. Aria staggered onto the sand, and someone guided Nic’s head onto her knee telling her they’d called an ambulance. Meanwhile Justin’s brother was panicking and apologising endlessly.
‘You can help now. Please fetch some blankets,’ Aria told him, sounding calmer than she felt. ‘Ask Cal in the kitchen to make a hot drink. Boiling water is fine, if that’s all he can quickly lay his hands on. I think Nic has cold water shock.’ She pinched his ear lobe and looked down into his face. ‘Canyou hear me, Nic? Keep breathing and we’ll get you warm again.’ She looked frantically around. ‘Is someone taking care of my dog?’
