“I found out that Steven Weaver will be at Zara’s wedding.”
Carole blinked, speechless.
She hadn’t thought of Steven Weaver in years.
Okay, that wasn’t true. Shehadthought of him. Far too often. But in her defence, she’d tried not to.
Steven Weaver was the only man who had ever broken her heart. Carole had fallen for him when she was a wide-eyed twenty-year old filled with the wild romance and excitement of first love.
And when he destroyed the relationship they’d built, he destroyed her wide-eyed innocence, too… and took a piece of her shattered heart with him when he left.
Carole shoved the unhappy thoughts to the back of her head and tried to focus on the astonishing news her mother had just delivered.
“Why is Steven Weaver going to Zara’s wedding?” Carole asked a little breathlessly, trying and failing to make sense of it.
“He’s coming as the plus-one of someone on the groom’s side,” Nina explained. “She’s an old friend of the groom’s from his university days, Jilly somebody-or-other. Your cousin only made the connection recently when they were finalising the names of all the guests for the place settings for the meal at the reception. This friend of her fiancé’s lives somewhere over in Kent and although they’ve kept in touch over the years, they don’t see each other socially very often. When Zara saw that this Jilly person had confirmed the name of her plus-one as Steven Weaver, she’d asked her fiancé some questions and realised it wasyourSteven, Carole.”
Carole let out a soft sigh. “He hasn’t beenmySteven for a long time, Mum.”
“Oh, I know, but… well, you know what I mean.” Nina looked anguished. “Anyway, given everything that happened between the two of you back then, Zara asked her mother if she ought to let you know that Steven would be at the wedding, and your Auntie Joanna decided to have a quiet word with me about it. Naturally, I planned on telling you that Steven would be there. However, I also thought you’d feel uncertain about being at the wedding alone, when Steven will be there as a plus-one, and so I decided to find someone you could take with you.”
In other words, her mother hadn’t wanted Carole to feel like the sad, unattached loner at the wedding when the one-time love-of-her-life turned up with another woman on his arm.
Carole wanted to be annoyed at her mother for not telling her about all this as soon as she found out, and also for this ridiculous meddling she was orchestrating to set her up with a wedding date. But the news about Steven had left her winded and she couldn’t work up the energy to get stroppy about it all.
“I never liked that Steven Weaver,” her father said with a frown. “I wish you’d told me about this already, Nina.”
“Well, I’m telling you now.”
“He shouldn’t be allowed at a family wedding,” Frederick grumbled. “Zara should tell her fiancé to tell this friend of his that her plus-one isn’t welcome!”
“Thanks Dad, but that would be rude to the friend of the groom and make a mountain out of a molehill,” Carole said. “Steven and I haven’t been together for almost fifteen years. It’s no big deal.”
That was both true and not true. In the grand scheme of things, bumping into an old flame fifteen years after their relationship ended shouldn’t be difficult. It wasn’t as if she’d gone around pining for the man for all this time.
Still, realising she’d see him at the wedding made her feel stupidly anxious.
Anxious and embarrassed, too. Considering how things had ended between them, embarrassment was inevitable, surely?
“Now that you know that Steven Weaver will be at this wedding,” her mother said, “perhaps you want to reconsider my idea about setting you up with Bradley Godfrey as your plus-one? That way, at least you won’t be there as a lonely, recently separated person who’s still single in her mid-thirties?”
“Thanks for that, Mum,” Carole said, rolling her eyes at her mother’s blunt characterisation. “You really know how to make someone feel good about themselves.”
“Well, I’m just saying!”
“For God’s sake, Nina,” Frederick said. “You’re like a one-woman wrecking ball.”
Nina ignored him. “At least if you have a date at the wedding, Carole, you will have someone you can dance with and keep you company, someone who’ll be at your side the entire time. It’s a long day and the last thing I want is for you to feel like you’re alone while Steven Weaver is parading around on the arm of some other female guest.”
Her mother’s schemes and machinations might irritate her, but Carole couldn’t deny that Nina’s motivations were good and that her righteous indignation on Carole’s behalf was genuine.
She also couldn’t deny that the idea of seeing Steven again was hard enough, without doing it at a huge wedding where she would be alone while Steven was with another woman.
“So, what do you think?” Nina said, looking hopeful. “Should I set you up with Bradley Godfrey for your wedding date?”
Carole’s unease at the prospect of seeing Steven again didn’t mean she was about to surrender to her mother’s disastrous attempt to pair her off with the gruesome Bradley Godfrey.
“No, I don’t want you to set me up with Bradley,” Carole said, and then found herself adding, “Actually, I already have a date lined up.”
