Melissa followed suit by drinking hers in long gulps. ‘That’s good.’
‘It’s really sad they went so long without being in touch,’ he said, nodding towards the open doors of the barn.
‘Harvey…’
‘I’m not having a dig, honest.’
‘I’m glad I’m here,’ she admitted and when their eyes met he was desperate to know whether she meant glad to be in the Cove for Barney or happy to be opposite him right now.
But he didn’t get a chance to ask before music drifted to them. It was coming from the barn and with grins on their faces he and Melissa tiptoed over to the open doors. Peeking in, they saw that Barney had put the iPad out and the classic ‘At Last’ by Etta James echoed around the barn. And even if he and Melissa weren’t hiding, Harvey suspected neither Barney nor Lois would even notice them watching. They both had their eyes closed, they moved slowly to the music. Barney was managing to be not only upright but to move as well as Lois.
‘Would you look at that,’ Harvey whispered to Melissa.
‘I don’t think he ever stopped loving her.’
‘No, I don’t suppose he ever did.’
They stayed there, watching, Harvey doing his best to ignore the fresh scent from Melissa’s hair assaulting his senses, making him want to take her into the barn and dance with her, never let her go again. Was he going to be like Barney in years to come? Would Melissa go off and start over, have a family with Mr Pilot, and he’d be the one left in the village, his life stagnating in the same place?
The delicate tune washed over them as Melissa leaned closer. ‘We should get the lunch ready.’
He shuddered at the feel of her breath against his ear before leading the way inside and pulling himself together at the same time.
Melissa fussed with finding the plates, taking out only those that had no chips on them, the surfaces undamaged. She pulled out cutlery and gave it a polish, even found some napkins from the Welsh dresser and laid them out.
‘Bit fancy,’ said Harvey. ‘I don’t think he’ll notice now Lois is in his sights.’
‘It’s so romantic,’ she beamed at him as she pulled the dish from the oven and set it onto a mat in the centre of the table. She added a serving spoon beside it. ‘He seems a lot happier already.’
‘About that…’
‘Do I smell lunch?’ came Barney’s voice.
‘You certainly do,’ Melissa called back. ‘The pasta bake is ready, the salad is dressed. Lois, can I get you something to drink?’
Melissa continued playing the hostess, she fussed over Lois and Barney and for once Barney didn’t protest, in fact he seemed to enjoy it.
Lois was excellent company. She was shy at first when all four of them sat down but it didn’t take her long to come out of her shell and she was soon producing anecdotes about Barney’s younger years, his mischief at the marina, the way he’d always seemed to be the troublemaker even when he wasn’t, how much fun they both had over the long lazy summers they’d shared. They stopped before it got to the crux of the moments that broke them, shared a knowing glance, and moved the conversation on.
As Harvey cleared the plates, talk turned to the Wedding Dress Ball, its history, how Lois wanted to organise one where she lived. Barney was full of advice, Harvey hadn’t seen him this animated in a long while.
‘The barn does look wonderful,’ Lois complimented. ‘And you have music all sorted?’
‘We certainly do,’ Barney chimed. ‘I have the same band every year, they work the crowd, they do a mixture of songs from different eras, some to get you moving, others more sedate and romantic.’
‘And the food?’ she asked.
Barney took the lead again as though he couldn’t stop talking now he’d started and explained their choices, how the catering would be served. Harvey and Melissa shared a look of amusement. Barney was well into his stride.
‘And do you have your outfit?’ Lois asked Barney.
‘If there’s one good thing about hospital it’s the revolting food.’ He patted his stomach. ‘I’ll definitely fit into my suit.’
‘And what about you, Lois?’ Melissa asked. ‘Will you come?’
Lois didn’t reply until she’d looked at Barney. ‘I think I’d like to, very much. I could extend my stay.’
‘Well that’s settled.’ Neither Harvey nor Melissa missed the wobble in Barney’s voice. ‘You’ll need a dress.’
‘Don’t get any ideas, I won’t fit into the one I know is still in your wardrobe. A little birdie told me,’ she said, both of them looking Melissa’s way. ‘I was a slip of a thing back then and although I’m not much bigger now, I wouldn’t fancy my chances.’
‘You know,’ Melissa began, ‘a lot of people have their dresses altered to fit. I’m sure there’s something we could do.’
‘I’d rather not,’ Lois admitted. ‘The dress holds a lot of memories as it is. But it seems a shame for it to go to waste.’ Barney seemed to intuit her meaning straight away as they both looked at Melissa.
‘Me?’ Melissa asked. ‘You want me to wear it?’
‘Do you have a dress?’ Barney asked.
‘Well…no –’
‘Then that’s another thing settled. Let me get it.’ He went off to his bedroom.
Melissa moved across to his vacated place, next to Lois. ‘I know what the dress means to you, I don’t want to ruin it or bring either of you any pain by wearing it.’
‘It won’t – in fact, it may well help. It’s about time it did something other than hang in a wardrobe.’
When Lois received the dress from Barney, each of them touching the material at the same time, it was a moment of peace, an acceptance of the pain they would share forever.
Lois sniffed gently. ‘Barney, do you have any pins?’
He bellowed a laugh that was just like their Barney of old. ‘Of course I don’t.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Harvey chuckled. ‘I’ll give Mum a call, she’ll have some.’
As he did the honours he pretended to only be taking notice of his conversation on the phone when really his attention was fixed on Melissa. Lois was holding the dress up against her, talking about her measurements, how much they’d cut off the length to avoid the material with the chunk already cut out, discussing taking it up to above the knee, how they’d pull it in at the waist, the way it would flatter her figure.
When his mum began to talk about his brother having sent another letter, passing on his regards, Harvey bristled and finished the call he was only half focused on anyway. ‘I’m going to head to Mum’s, pick up pins and her sewing machine. She said she’d be happy to come over and help with adjustments if you need it.’
‘The more the merrier,’ Lois declared as though she was a part of the household already. And Barney didn’t seem to mind at all. ‘I may take her up on that over the next day or so.’
‘I’ll pass the message on,’ said Harvey.
Harvey was glad to get out of there even for only half an hour, and he returned a lot calmer – at least until he walked into the lounge and found Melissa standing in the dress. Despite the section cut out at the bottom, the waist that needed pulling in a little, she looked drop-dead gorgeous and he had to pick his jaw up from the ground before she caught him staring.
Lois soon got busy with pins and a tape measure and Melissa was chatting away, being herself. Barney had taken a seat and was taking all of this in, his eyes brighter than they’d been since before his fall that day in the barn.
When the women began talking hemlines and beading patterns Harvey checked on how Barney was really feeling.
‘It’s been one hell of a day,’ said Barney.
‘You’ve got that right.’
‘I never thought I’d see her again.’ He reached out and patted Harvey’s arm. ‘Thank you, both of you, for meddling.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘I’m more than sure. Take it from me, life’s too short to let your past take over the
rest of your life.’
Harvey didn’t let the words sink in for long. ‘Talking of life being too short, I meant to ask, since when have you been able to dance?’ His question piqued Melissa and Lois’s attention too. ‘Last I knew, you were barely out of that chair, certainly not without the aid of the walking frame to go any distance, and then I find you in the barn dancing with Lois.’
Barney shrugged. ‘What can I say?’ But Melissa didn’t miss the look of mischief – or was it guilt? – either.
‘Wait a minute…’ Melissa came over, holding the dress against her chest so it didn’t fall down. It was all Harvey could do not to reach out and touch her delicate skin, hook his hand around the back of her neck and pull her close. ‘Barney, truth time,’ she said. ‘Have you been faking it all this time?’
‘Faking it?’ Harvey asked and looked Barney’s way too.
‘I really fell, I was in hospital,’ he said, eyes innocently wide.
Melissa readjusted the dress but not before Harvey got another glimpse of cleavage. He was standing in just the right spot. ‘I don’t mean that part, I mean the part about this being the beginning of the end, you not being interested in anything other than sitting in that chair you’re in now, not wanting to put on the ball. Was it all make-believe?’
One look at Lois’s stern expression and Barney confessed. ‘You got me.’ He held up a hand before anyone could say anything else. ‘When I first came out of hospital I wasn’t myself. That fall scared me witless. I thought, what am I doing trying to live on my own as though I’m in my forties and not my seventies? I thought, this is it, a reminder I’m getting old, I’m past it. When you first came back to Heritage Cove, Melissa, I promise you I was not pretending.’
‘When did your little performance start?’ Harvey stood at Melissa’s side, arms folded across his chest.
Barney had the grace to look sheepish. ‘I heard a nurse talking to Harvey at the hospital and didn’t think much of it at the time, but then once I was home I began to really consider what she’d said. She told him how some elderly patients – I had to bite my tongue when I heard that – withdrew from usual activities after a fall like mine. As soon as Melissa turned up and I saw the way you two acted around each other, I decided to use that to my advantage. I could tell there was a lot of history to be dealt with and I didn’t want you to end up doing what I’d done, Harvey, letting her go without putting up a fight.’ He looked over at Lois, whose stern look gave way to understanding. ‘Five years is a long time, I didn’t want that to turn into decades like it was for me. And I didn’t think either of you would either.’
‘But surely that was for us to decide, Barney,’ Melissa protested, the dress fitting temporarily forgotten, shoulders bare as she waited for answers.
‘I thought, if you were to join forces and put on the Wedding Dress Ball, knowing what it meant to me and this village, then you’d be forced to spend time together.’
‘You thought you’d get us back together?’ Harvey wondered.
‘I had no idea whether it would come to that. I thought at the very least you’d see one another, you’d end up talking, and then if you still went your separate ways, so be it.’
There was an uncomfortable silence until Melissa snatched up the brochure for Aubrey House. ‘And what about this? Was this part of the act?’
He nodded. ‘It was. No way was I ever going to that place. My home is here, I’m not leaving until I’m dead.’
Harvey shook his head. ‘Do you have any idea how worried we’ve both been?’
‘He’s right,’ Lois admonished, albeit with a small smile, ‘it was a cruel trick.’
‘I was desperate. Please, it was with the best intentions.’
‘So you haven’t been slumped in that chair in front of the TV the whole time?’ Melissa demanded.
Barney shook his head. ‘Whenever you two left me alone I used every opportunity I could to move with the aid of the walking frame until I was able to get about without it. There was no way I wasn’t going to dance with Melissa at the ball, it’s what I did every year until she left.’
He knew how to placate her. She shook her head. ‘Barney…’
‘I was exhausted with all the physical effort but happy too. I tackled the balance exercises, carefully.’ He hesitated before telling them, ‘The health visitor was in on it too, she knew I’d been doing exercises, I told her everything. She loved the conspiracy said it was one of her most fun visits in a long time.’
‘Who else was in on it?’ Harvey asked.
‘Lottie from the little shop on The Street. She brought round a basket of mini muffins as a get-well-soon gift, she told me she’d been taking dance lessons ready for the ball, and I asked her to help me practise. We moved very slowly at first, but I didn’t want to be sitting in the corner at the ball like some invalid, not when you were back in the Cove, Melissa.’
‘You had us fooled good and proper,’ said Harvey.
‘My intentions were all good, I swear. With Melissa back in Heritage Cove the thought of not having the ball and not dancing with her became unbearable.’ Eyes glistening, he looked her way. ‘After we lost Harry I wasn’t lucky enough to become a father again, but having the both of you in my life stopped me getting washed away with my grief in the moments when I could’ve easily let it happen. You two gave me a reason to carry on.’ He looked at each of them.
Now he focused on Melissa. ‘I hadn’t told a soul about Lois and me, or about Harry, but one day I told your mum.’
‘Mum knew?’ Melissa gasped.
‘I think it’s why she sent you round here so often, she knew the pain I was in. She never breathed a word and for that I was grateful. I never talked about it with her again, I didn’t want to, you were the therapy I needed. The both of you.’
‘Even when you were angry at us?’ Harvey asked.
‘I was never angry.’
‘I beg to differ. Remember that stinking-hot summer when Melissa and I had a water fight using your garden hose?’
Barney’s laughter had him clutching his side. ‘They were so naughty,’ he told Lois. ‘There was a hosepipe ban that year and I came back to find them soaking one another and the entire courtyard. Lord knows how many litres of water they wasted.’
‘You know what,’ said Harvey, ‘you saved me too. You were a father figure in my life when I needed it the most, so I guess I can forgive you for your little games now.’
Barney looked too emotional to talk, he just nodded. Lois dabbed her eyes discreetly with a tissue. Nobody said anything for a moment, Barney looked scared they’d throttle him, and it was Melissa who finally broke the silence.
‘You’re a kind man, Barney. Thank you for being you, even though you played us good and proper.’
‘I’d never make you stay after all of this,’ Barney told her, ‘not unless you wanted to be here. I let you go once when you needed to, because I’d done the same thing.’ Clasping Lois’s hand, he told them, ‘I moved away from Leafbourne, came to a village where nobody knew me, to lick my wounds if you like. On the anniversary of Harry’s death I walked past White Clover and it was a sign. I know that kind of thing sounds ridiculous, but I stood there staring at the building, asking myself, why today? And I found myself going in. It wasn’t Ashley running it all then, of course, it was another woman, Lesley I think her name was. But we talked for hours, it was almost a kind of counselling. I ended up helping out with odd jobs around the premises and while I was there I soon got to realise that Lois and I weren’t the only ones to go through the horrific pain of losing a child.’ His voice caught for a moment. ‘It was then that something clicked. I wanted to do something, I wanted to move forwards in whatever way I could. I’d done a terrible job of doing so up until then. A couple of weeks later I saw a feature on the evening news about a family who ran a wedding dress ball every year to raise money for some charity or other. I took one look over at my barn and thought, I can do that. I imagined a band, people dancing,
guests chatting away, the company, the social life I’d shied away from. It was all there for the taking.’
‘And you made it happen,’ said Harvey. ‘Without anybody ever knowing why.’
‘They didn’t need to know,’ said Barney. Throughout his recount he and Lois had never let go of each other’s hand.
Melissa shuffled the dress a little as the weighty material became harder to hold on to. ‘I’m glad you confessed, Barney, but right now, can we put any more tales of your antics on hold and get on with pinning this dress? I’m well aware that I’m standing here half naked.’
Harvey was well aware too.
Lois did the honours and finished pinning the section she needed to. ‘There, I think we’re done. Let’s get the dress off and I’ll set to work.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Melissa asked.
‘It won’t take me long. I’m a whizz with a sewing machine, and Harvey, if your mum wouldn’t mind helping me out I’d really appreciate it.’
‘Of course, how does tomorrow sound?’
‘Tomorrow sounds perfect.’
Lois seemed on the surface to have slotted in with the man she hadn’t seen for such a long time. They referred to the years they’d been together, not dwelling on the painful times. But when he’d glanced at her on occasion he’d detected a vulnerability, most likely the same feeling that had made her run in the first place.
Now, with Melissa in the bedroom and Lois helping her, Harvey told Barney, ‘I could get very angry, you know.’
‘I know, son.’
Barney knew how to get him in his weak spot, addressing him that way. ‘But I won’t.’ He sat down, arms outstretched along his thighs. ‘Melissa is at least here and we’re talking.’
They shared a brief look before Melissa rejoined them. ‘You’re both so kind to let me wear the dress,’ she told Barney and Lois, who followed behind her with the garment and laid it on the table next to the sewing machine. Barney had already fussed over the table and made sure there wasn’t a single crumb from lunch, or drop from a drink.
Coming Home to Heritage Cove Page 25