by Kate Hewitt
“I have no idea.” Not, she hoped, that Dan had realised she didn’t love him. How would everyone react to that? They’d think she was heartless, and maybe she was, because she couldn’t feel anything right now.
She crossed to the settee and sank down on it, her mind both numb and whirling. She felt strangely distant from herself, as if she were watching this melodramatic scene unfold from the outside. I wonder, she thought, what’s going to happen next? What is that poor woman going to do?
“I’ll take care of it, if you like,” Dan said. “Since I’m the one…well.” He sighed. “Just let’s agree on what we’re going to say. That it’s a mutual decision, or…?”
“A mutual decision, I suppose,” Rachel said after a moment, her voice flat. Anything else seemed too awful to contemplate, to announce, and yet… She could not envision walking across to The Winter Hare and telling everyone the wedding was off. She simply couldn’t.
“All right, then.”
“But what about everything else?” She let her head fall into her hands, too overcome and exhausted to think through the endless repercussions. What about their honeymoon? Their house?
“We can tackle those later. The important thing now is letting everyone know and cancelling the imminent wedding stuff.”
The wedding stuff. Rachel thought of her beautiful dress hanging upstairs, swathed in plastic. The trays of canapés in the fridge, the bottles of champagne on ice, for the after-party back at the vicarage. The hotel in Keswick ready to be bedecked with flowers for the reception, her sisters’ bridesmaid dresses, her father’s toast… None of it was needed anymore. None of it was going to happen.
“Dan, are you really sure about this?” She lifted her head to stare at him blearily; it felt like more than she could manage to so much as rise from this settee, never mind face fifty guests. Everything felt insurmountable, impossible.
“Aren’t you?”
She stared at him, unsure how to answer. She didn’t feel sure of anything. And yet even now, in the midst of her shock and despair, she couldn’t deny that treacherous little flicker of relief she’d felt when Dan had first told her he was calling it off. It hadn’t lasted more than a moment, a second, and yet…
It had been there. As much as she wanted to deny it, she couldn’t.
But was an elusive flicker of feeling a real reason to derail her entire life?
“I don’t know anything,” she told Dan. “I don’t know anything at all. I’m completely blindsided by this.”
“I’ll handle it all. You don’t even have to come over to the restaurant if you don’t want to.”
She didn’t, she definitely didn’t, and yet that felt like a cop-out.
“Rachel…” Dan hesitated by the door. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. More than I could ever say. I know this is the last way we’d want things to end…”
She nodded dumbly, because she didn’t know what else to do. Maybe later she’d find it in herself to be angry, to feel wronged. Right now she just felt overwhelmed.
“I’ll go tell everyone.” He hesitated, and Rachel wondered what she should do. Say. This was the moment—the final moment. If Dan walked over there, went to The Winter Hare and told all her waiting family and friends the wedding was off…well, then there was really no going back, was there?
Except Rachel knew, with a leaden certainty, that they’d already reached the point of no return. Maybe it had happened when those first words had come out of Dan’s mouth. The wedding is off.
Now she said nothing and after another endless moment Dan walked out of the room.
Chapter Two
“RACHEL, LET ME in.”
Rachel wrapped the pillow around her head and scrunched her eyes shut, but her sister Esther was determined, as ever. She rapped sharply on the door for about the tenth time. “Let me in. You can’t stay in there forever.”
No, but she could try. She’d like to, that was for certain. Even with her eyes closed and the pillow over her head, Rachel could feel the bright summer sunlight streaming through the windows of her childhood bedroom.
After Dan had left last night, she’d walked upstairs, peeled off her dress, crawled into bed, and closed her eyes. Eventually, thankfully, she’d fallen asleep. Through the numbing fog of restless sleep she’d heard the others come in, and then a little while later a quiet tap on her door that had been easy to ignore.
Esther’s determined knocking now was not.
“I’m not going to give up,” her older sister informed her. “I’ll just stay here knocking until you have to come out for food and water, or at least the loo.”
Rachel thought she could manage all right without the first two, but the third was becoming a pressing issue. And she couldn’t ignore her sister or the rest of her family forever, much as she longed to. Reality was going to intrude sooner or later, and it would need to be dealt with.
“Fine,” she called, her voice croaky. She threw the pillow and covers off and staggered out of bed, the bright sunlight an assault to both her senses and sensibilities. With Cumbrian weather so woefully uncertain, the clear blue skies promised a perfect day for a wedding. Too bad there wasn’t going to be one.
Rachel unlocked the door and flung it open before crawling back into bed and drawing the duvet over her head. She couldn’t ignore her family forever, but she’d do her best.
“Ah, Rach.” Esther’s voice, so strident seconds before, was now full of sorrow, and that was far worse. A lump formed instantly in Rachel’s throat and she scrunched her eyes against the threat of tears. If she started crying now, she’d never stop. She hadn’t cried last night, and she wasn’t going to cry now. She wasn’t ready for that emotional bloodletting.
She felt the mattress dip as Esther sat on the edge of the bed and put one hand on Rachel’s duvet-covered shoulder. “I’d ask how you’re coping, but I think the answer’s obvious,” she said in her dry way, and against all odds, Rachel let out a hiccup of laughter. It was all just so endlessly awful.
Every time she got her mind around part of it, something else leapt out of her. She’d woken up this morning thinking of the flowers—white roses and pink tulips for her bridal bouquet, and posies of miniature pink roses for the bridesmaids. Plus, all the flowers in the church that the older ladies of the flower guild had selflessly arranged yesterday afternoon. They’d looked gorgeous, festooned with white silk ribbons and trailing ivy at the end of each pew. All wasted. All pointless.
“What did Dan say, anyway? Last night?” Rachel asked, her voice muffled from beneath the duvet. Despite her desire to remain in hiding for the rest of her life, curiosity was starting to win out—and she knew Esther, of all people, would give her the unvarnished truth.
“He didn’t say much, really. Just that you’d both come to the decision to call the wedding off. Which didn’t surprise me all that much, to be honest.”
Rachel yanked the duvet off her head. “It didn’t? Because it surprised me.”
Esther cocked her head, her eyes gleaming with understanding. “Ah, so it was Dan who called it off, then?”
Rachel groaned. She’d walked right into that one. “Yes, I suppose he started the conversation,” she admitted after a moment. “But we did both…agree, I suppose. It’s not as if I want to marry a man who doesn’t want to marry me.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from spiking her words, filling her heart. Why had Dan had to go and wreck everything?
Rachel squinted at her sister, her earlier words thudding through her. “What do you mean, you weren’t surprised?”
“Something was wrong between you, Rachel. I saw it all along. I asked you about it back in Manchester, when you were looking for your wedding dress—”
Rachel winced at the memory. She’d insisted nothing was wrong then, and she’d believed it. She’d been happy. All right, yes, she’d been a little tense, because getting married was a big step. But she’d still wanted to go through with it.
“You looked as if you were heading to t
he gallows,” Esther continued bluntly. “Not like a woman about to marry the love of her life.”
Rachel slid back beneath the covers, grateful for the cocoon of her duvet. She wasn’t ready to hear her sister’s particular brand of bluntness just now. She wasn’t ready to dissect her relationship to Dan, and figure out why it had ended the way it had, or what it might have been lacking. There was far too much else to deal with, in any case.
“Don’t, Esther, okay? I’m not ready to have this kind of conversation.”
“Okay.” For once Esther relented. The last few months, and her own separation and reunion with her husband Will, had softened her, at least a little. “I won’t say anything more just now.”
“How…how is everyone else taking it? Mum and Dad?”
“They’re worried about you, first and foremost—”
“But all the guests? And the reception…?” Which was at a hotel in nearby Keswick. Rachel shuddered to think of all the wasted expense. It would run well into the thousands. Why on earth had Dan pulled a stunt like this? If he’d been having doubts, he should have said so, a long time ago. And if he’d thought she’d been having doubts, well, he should have said that too. He should have had it out with her when there still had been time to—what?
Misery swamped her, dousing that brief flicker of self-righteous anger she’d been longing to nurture. Still time to call it off?
“We can deal with all that, Rachel.”
“It’s such a waste.”
“Yes, but marrying the wrong person would have been a bigger waste.”
“You think that’s what I was doing?” She flung a hand out from under the duvet. “Never mind. Like I said, I don’t want to have that conversation just now. Just tell me the basics. The logistics. What’s happening? How are we meant to tell everyone the whole thing is off?” She snuck a glance at the clock and saw it was already half past nine. She was supposed to be getting married in less than two hours. The photographer was meant to have been here half an hour ago, but as far as she could tell she hadn’t arrived.
“We’ve told everyone already,” Esther answered. “We had to, considering.”
“Right.” Rachel closed her eyes, the longing to blot out the entire world, her present reality, overwhelming. “So…”
“It was relatively easy, actually. Dad sent out a mass email, and we put a message on the wedding website. Mum made a bunch of calls, and there is a notice on the church door.” Esther rose from the bed to look out the window. “No one’s out there now. I think everyone knows.”
It was too horrible to contemplate. All her friends from school, where she taught Year Three, and everyone she’d known since the year dot in the village…her uni friends, who had travelled all the way from Manchester and London, and were staying in a local B&B…not to mention her family, all her relatives, even her Great-Aunt Edith who was incredibly ornery and would probably say something like ‘you couldn’t keep him, could you?’ as soon as she saw her.
Rachel let out a groan. “I really think I’d like to just live in this bed forever.”
“I understand, but that’s not really possible, is it?” Esther answered, ever practical. Rachel groaned again.
“I know it’s not, Esther, obviously. But give me more than a single morning to get over the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, okay?”
“Is this the worst thing?” Esther asked quietly, and with a shaft of pain Rachel realised her sister was talking about the death of their brother Jamie, when she’d been just eleven and a half years old.
“Of course I don’t mean that,” she answered in little more than a whisper, tears stinging her eyes. “For heaven’s sake, Esther. Can’t you give me a break for just one day?”
“Sorry.” Esther sounded genuinely contrite. “I didn’t actually mean Jamie. I was just thinking that all in all, I think this is a blessing—”
“A blessing—”
“In a very big disguise, but yes.”
Rachel shook her head. She was not ready to think that way, not remotely. Reluctantly she pushed off the duvet. She didn’t want to get out of bed but she did need to escape her sister. “I’m going to take a shower and then have a lot of strong coffee. Maybe then I’ll feel more like facing things.”
Thankfully Esther took the hint and left the room, giving her one last bracing smile. Rachel reached for her dressing gown.
Twenty minutes later, having let the hot water stream—or rather, trickle—over her in the vicarage’s ancient shower, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a summery blouse, with a little bit of make-up to give her some much-needed armour, Rachel headed downstairs to face the first hurdle: her loving family.
The hushed atmosphere of the kitchen, everyone sitting around the familiar oak table, cradling coffee cups, reminded Rachel of the hospital room of a terminal patient, or even a wake. Not good, at any rate.
Her mother Ruth looked up first, her face creasing in a relieved smile before drooping back into deep concern. “Rachel. Let me get you a cup of tea, something to eat—”
Rachel’s stomach felt both hollow and queasy. She didn’t think she could manage a mouthful, but she knew her mother well enough to know she needed to do something for her. Food was her mother’s love language.
“Thanks, Mum.” Rachel eased into the remaining chair around the table. Although her parents had had a big empty-out over the last few months in preparation for their move to China, the kitchen, with its rumbling Aga and weathered table, was still wonderfully familiar. Charlie, their elderly black Lab, was stretched out in front of the Aga although he lumbered over to her and nudged her knee as she sat down. Charlie always knew when you needed a little canine TLC.
“How are you, darling?” her father Roger asked. He gave her a smile of understanding and compassion while managing to seem as if he didn’t pity her. Rachel smiled back gratefully, or at least she tried to.
“I’m all right,” she said, although she wasn’t. “At least, I will be.” She hoped.
Her sister Anna and Anna’s boyfriend Simon were both looking at her sympathetically, and Will, Esther’s husband, gave her a quick, commiserating grimace. Rachel’s heart lifted improbably, infinitesimally. At least no one was looking at her like they felt horribly sorry for her, even if they probably did. Unless they blamed her? Rachel’s stomach went icy at the thought. The truth was, she had no idea how anyone felt, including herself.
“Here you are,” Ruth said, sliding a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of Rachel. She must have had it ready and waiting. “And here, as well.” The cup of tea came next, milky and sweet, just as she liked it.
“Thanks, Mum.”
“Of course, darling.” Ruth sat back in her seat. Everyone remained silent, watching her. Waiting for her cue, but Rachel had no idea how to handle this moment.
“Where’s Miriam?” she asked finally.
“She’s sleeping,” Ruth answered. “She’s so tired, poor love. Must be the jet lag.” Her younger sister had arrived back from Australia a few days ago, surprising everyone by saying she might be staying for good. Miriam had followed her wanderlust for the last four years, since leaving secondary school. Perhaps her itchy feet had finally been well and truly scratched.
“Okay.” Rachel took a sip of tea, savouring the warmth. “What about everyone else?”
“Who else, darling?” Ruth asked.
“Aunt Edith…my uni friends…everyone who came in from out of town.” And Dan. Where was Dan? Did she want to know? Did she care? Yes, of course she did. Yesterday she had been planning to marry him. Those feelings didn’t vanish overnight. Perhaps they never vanished at all.
“Everyone’s fine,” Roger said. “Having a nice leisurely brunch, most likely. Everyone knows, if you’re concerned about that.”
In a village the size of Thornthwaite, where Rachel was well known for being the vicar’s daughter, the news had undoubtedly travelled with the speed of light. “That’s good,” Rachel said. “I gu
ess.”
Her head ached with all the details she couldn’t bear to think about. “What about the hotel in Keswick…?”
“We rang and told them,” Roger stated calmly. “As well as the caterers, and the band, and the florist.” He smiled. “It’s all sorted, love.”
Rachel couldn’t keep from dropping her head into her hands at the thought, overwhelmed by everything that had been lost and wasted, including her own dreams. “All that money…” she whispered.
“Don’t worry about the money, Rachel,” Ruth said firmly. “That’s not important now.”
“But it is.” She couldn’t keep from saying it. She and Dan had paid for most of the wedding costs, but her parents had shouldered what they could, and it ran into the thousands. All wasted. All because she’d wanted such a bloody big wedding. Rachel winced, her face still hidden by her hands, the realisation thudding through her. She’d wanted the fairy tale, and look how it had turned out.
“Rachel, please don’t worry about the money,” Roger said in that same unruffled voice. It didn’t surprise her; her father had never been much concerned with money, and had happily foregone holidays and extravagant presents for a life of simple pleasures—family around the table, fell walks with their dog, laughter and sharing and joy. And she felt the same—of course she did, but still.
“How can I not worry about the money, Dad?” Rachel looked up, blinking the world and all the worried faces back into focus. “It was a lot. Most of your savings, probably…”
“I don’t think you know the first thing about my savings,” Roger returned mildly, “and in any case, we’ve been able to get some things refunded.”
“You have?” Curious now, Rachel asked, “Who gave a refund? I mean, so late…?”
“The hotel gave back our deposit, and the band did as well. People want to help, Rachel.”
She stared at him for a moment, realisation dawning slowly, like a clearing mist. “You mean they feel sorry for me.”