Midsummer Magic

by Julia Williams

  ‘Diana –’ Josie started to protest. Underneath the bravado, she could see that Di was struggling to hold it together.

  ‘Find yourself another bridesmaid, Josie. That is, if you ever make it down the aisle, which somehow I doubt.’ Getting up, Diana stormed off down the path, leaving the three of them stunned.

  ‘And then there were three,’ said Harry, trying to sound light-hearted.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Harry,’ Josie said. She was devastated. It looked as though she’d just lost her best friend.

  Harry was stunned, first by Diana’s declaration, and then by the bile that had spewed from her lips. He’d always seen her as Josie’s feisty friend. Sure, she could be a bit sharp sometimes, but essentially she meant well. He’d had no idea that she had been harbouring such bitter thoughts against Josie. Nor that she still had feelings for Ant. She’d spent so much of the weekend on his case, it was the last thing he’d been expecting. But then again, maybe she’d been protesting too much.

  ‘She’ll get over it, Josie,’ he said, putting a tentative arm round her shoulder. ‘I’m sure in the morning she’ll have calmed down and everything will be okay.’

  ‘But it won’t, though, will it?’ said Josie, ‘I only wanted Di as my bridesmaid. How can I have a bridesmaid who doesn’t want to speak to me?’

  ‘Fair point,’ said Ant.

  Josie flopped down on the grass, and started tearing clumps of grass out of the ground. She looked as if she was pondering something. Eventually she burst out with ‘Do you think she’s right about the wedding? Have I been a complete nightmare about it?’

  Harry said nothing, staring into the darkness, chewing his lip and wondering what to tell her. The silence that followed was almost unbearable.

  ‘I think she deserves an answer, mate,’ Ant said quietly, and Harry felt like thumping him. Since when did Ant have the monopoly on relationship advice?

  ‘Well?’ Josie looked at him. ‘You do still want to get married, don’t you?’

  Oh God. He wasn’t ready for this.

  ‘Look, Josie, I love you, you know I do,’ said Harry. ‘Earlier, when I thought you’d walked out on me, I felt as if my whole world had collapsed …’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Josie fixed him with those piercing blue eyes. He felt like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

  ‘Josie, I want to spend the rest of my life with you,’ he began.

  ‘I sense a but here,’ Josie replied.

  ‘But it’s too soon,’ Harry said miserably. ‘I’m not ready for marriage, there are too many things I want to do …’

  ‘I see,’ said Josie, tight-lipped, but it was clear she didn’t.

  ‘And I want to do them with you,’ said Harry helplessly.

  ‘But not married to me,’ said Josie. ‘I can be forever dangling at your side, but you will never commit, will you? I’m sorry, Harry. I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl. I just can’t do that.’

  They stared at one another in dismay, until Josie finally looked away.

  ‘It’s very late,’ she said. ‘Di’s right. We should go home. But at the moment I can’t be around you. Can you just go away, please?’

  ‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ Why was Ant being so solicitous to Josie? It was really annoying.

  ‘Kind offer, Ant, but I really want to be on my own,’ said Josie.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Ant. ‘Maybe we should go and see if Di’s okay.’

  ‘I don’t really care,’ said Josie, ‘so long as you don’t involve me.’

  ‘Josie,’ said Harry. ‘Please, you can’t mean it?’

  ‘Just go,’ she said. ‘If you really loved me, you’d let me be.’

  Feeling dejected and miserable, and not knowing quite what to do, Harry got up to go. It had been a disastrous evening and he wasn’t sure if there was a way back from it.

  Diana was furious with herself. Why had she acted on impulse like that? It was completely unlike her. Those things she’d said to Josie. She hadn’t even realised she felt like that until she’d said them. And she’d made a total tit of herself in front of Ant. He wasn’t interested in her anymore, and who could blame him. She’d been on his case ever since she got here. He probably thought she was winding him up. Bugger, bugger, bugger. If only she had a car, she’d drive off to find a hotel; she doubted that any of the little B&Bs in the village would open their doors to her at this time of night.

  ‘What a sodding nightmare,’ she said. Her fury had propelled her so far, but now she was slumped down and leaned against a tree, feeling utterly bereft. Her whole life seemed to be leading up to this moment: the disappointment of her parents, all the failed relationships, the loneliness – it all went back to that day in the hospital, when Ant had let her down.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. The baby. She’d made a point of never letting herself think about it. But tonight, after that conversation with Ant and everything that had happened since, she couldn’t box it away anymore. Huge sobs overwhelmed her. She was hugging her knees and feeling pathetically sorry for herself, and still the tears came.

  ‘Oh, dear, are you all right?’ Auberon Fanshawe was standing before her. ‘I was just going back to the theatre to meet Freddie and Will,’ he said, ‘and I couldn’t help noticing you were a bit upset.’

  Mortified, Diana tried frantically to wipe away her tears.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Auberon, ‘I’m an actor, I’m used to women crying. Hell, most of the time, it’s my fault they’re crying. May I?’

  He pointed to a patch of ground next to her, and when she nodded sat down beside her.

  ‘Fancy telling me what a nice girl like you is doing all alone in the woods bawling your eyes out?’

  ‘An old trouble,’ said Diana. ‘One I thought I’d put behind me. Stupid really.’

  ‘The worst kind,’ said Auberon, looking rather sad. ‘They have a habit of biting you on the bum.’

  ‘You and Tatiana?’ guessed Diana.

  ‘You and …?’

  ‘Ant,’ said Diana. ‘I thought he was the love of my life once, a long time ago. But he let me down really badly. And tonight I thought maybe I should let him back into my life again. But he’s not interested, he’s let me down again.’

  ‘We men can be good at that,’ said Auberon with a rueful sigh. ‘I made a big mistake once. I’ve regretted it forever. You never know, your Ant may have done the same.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Diana. ‘But I doubt it.’

  Ant followed Harry down the hill, feeling a mixture of emotions. Despite himself, he still felt the need to sort everything out; still felt responsible, and he felt really guilty about Diana. That had come as a bolt from the blue. What was he going to do about that? And more importantly, what about Harry and Josie? At the moment, he felt like thumping Harry. The look on Josie’s face when they’d left had nearly cut him in two. She’d looked so lost and lonely.

  ‘Why did you ask Josie to marry you if you didn’t want to get married?’ said Ant. ‘I told you it was a bad idea.’

  ‘I thought I did,’ said Harry. ‘I think I still do. But not now. Not yet. And not like this. All this wedding business. It’s been like living with a demented hen for the last few months. It’s all she ever talks about, and it’s driving me nuts. I hadn’t realised quite how bad it was till we got here and her mum ratcheted it up even more. Do you know Josie was looking up fire-eaters on the internet yesterday to have as evening entertainment? I tell you, it’s insane.’

  ‘So have a small wedding,’ said Ant.

  ‘But Josie set her heart on it being like this,’ said Harry. ‘I didn’t want to let her down.’

  ‘Too late for that, mate,’ said Ant. ‘I think you already have.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Harry.

  ‘So lie, then,’ said Ant. ‘That’s what I’d do.’

  ‘Yeah, and we all know how that goes,’ said Harry.

  ‘Meaning?’ Ant bristled.
/>   ‘Meaning you’ve never had a meaningful relationship in your life, partly because you lie. I want my relationship with Josie to be honest.’

  ‘Then more fool you,’ said Ant angrily. ‘And that’s not quite true. Di and I had something special once.’

  ‘The emphasis there being on “had”,’ said Harry. ‘You can’t tell me anything about relationships.’

  ‘I can tell you you’re a bloody idiot. You have a gorgeous girlfriend and you are in serious danger of losing her.’

  ‘Butt out of this, Ant,’ said Harry. ‘You know nothing about love. You’re incapable of it. You’ve even managed, God knows how, to get Diana falling at your feet again, and you can’t deal with that. You have no right to talk.’

  Harry walked off into the darkness, leaving Ant fuming.

  The two conflicting emotions, his loyalty to Harry and the way he was feeling about Josie, struggled to overcome one another, intertwined with a sense of responsibility towards Diana. But he realised if he went and found her now, he’d just make things worse. Bugger it, he’d tried. Harry didn’t deserve her. Ant turned round and went back to search for Josie.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Harry strode on down the path, furious with bloody Ant. How dare he give him advice about his love life? How bloody dare he? As if Ant had ever really been in love. Apart from possibly whatever had gone on between him and Di, and look how that turned out. Ant had been down on the idea of him and Josie being together right from the start. He just couldn’t stand for his friend to be happy.

  But how happy was he, really?

  Harry paused, and finding a convenient rock, sat down on it. He shivered and zipped up his fleece, glad Josie had made him wear it now. The night was colder now, and the last of the mist was dissipating. He could see the stars twinkling in the distance. It should have been a magical evening, spent in the company of the woman he loved and his best friends. Now none of them were speaking to one another. How could it have gone so badly wrong? And what did he really feel about the wedding?

  Thinking back, this was his fault, Harry realised miserably. He should never have proposed when he did. He’d been thrilled to move in with Josie, and it had been enough for him. If it hadn’t been for all that Halloween nonsense that Di had started, the thought of marriage wouldn’t have entered his head. And he might have spent the last six months persuading Josie to come travelling with him, instead of feeling all his options were being shut down in the inexorable march to the Wedding Day. Had he not rushed things, he might have been able to explain to Josie how much he wanted to change his life, how he wanted to shake off his rut, and how much a part of that she could be.

  Instead, he felt he was condemning himself to a life of stability and sensible behaviour. There was no reason why getting married shouldn’t stop them travelling, but to Josie, it seemed to signal that the adventurous part of their life was over; whereas for Harry, he felt it had only just begun.

  This was ridiculous. Sitting here thinking to himself wasn’t going to alter anything. He just needed to go back, find Josie and have a sensible chat with her about what he really wanted. Harry felt sure if she could just give him the opportunity to explain, everything would be all right. He’d be happy enough to go along with the wedding plans if it meant that they could go travelling afterwards. Hell, if the only good thing that came out of this ridiculous hypnosis experiment was him persuading Josie to see the world with him, then it had been worth doing. Josie would surely see that too, once she’d had a chance to think about it.

  With that, Harry got up and returned the way he’d come. There was only one way of finding out what Josie thought; he simply had to ask her.

  ‘So what’s the story with you and Tatiana?’ said Diana, mildly amazed that she was sitting down in a wood discussing the love life of someone she’d grown up watching on TV.

  ‘Same as you, I guess,’ sighed Auberon. ‘We were in love. It was all going well. She’d been pushing for an equal share on the show – it was before we were on TV, and Tati wanted her cut. Which was fair enough, but Freddie … well Freddie felt differently. He saw Tati as a nuisance. “There are plenty more fish in the sea,” he used to say, “pretty assistants are replaceable.” Except Tati, Tati wasn’t.’

  Bron sighed again.

  ‘I never let her see how I felt, like an idiot, and she thought I agreed with Freddie. So when she fell pregnant, she booked herself into a clinic. She got rid of our baby and never said a word to me till afterwards. When I found out, she said it wasn’t my decision, it was her body.’

  ‘She was right, wasn’t she?’ said Diana. ‘What would have happened to her career if she’d got pregnant then?’

  ‘To my shame, I’d probably have let her go. I didn’t really think of it from her point of view. Just that the show didn’t need a pregnant assistant. I was wrong, of course.’

  He looked into the distance, and sighed. ‘I still think about that baby, you know. I always pictured it as a she, a little clone of my Tati. She’d have been thirty by now.’

  Diana sat staring into the darkness. It felt like a warm cloak around her, and she found herself finding it remarkably easy to open up to Auberon, with whom she felt a natural affinity. Hearing his story emboldened her to tell him hers.

  ‘I lost a baby too,’ she said eventually. ‘And until tonight, I’ve spent every day of the last eight years pretending it didn’t exist.’

  ‘Was it Ant’s?’

  ‘Yes, but he didn’t know, till it was too late. I hadn’t got round to telling him, and then it was gone. I was barely pregnant at all.’

  ‘So what did Ant do?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Diana. ‘Nothing. I called him from the hospital, and he never came. And when I came out, I found him in the arms of my best friend. It broke my heart.’

  ‘You never know,’ said Auberon, patting her hand, ‘he might regret that now. Lord alone knows I do.’

  ‘He says he never got my messages,’ said Diana, ‘but I don’t know whether or not I believe him.’

  ‘Give him a chance,’ said Auberon: ‘Before you ruin your life with bitter regrets, like I’ve done.’

  Give Ant a chance? It was still a strange thought, after she’d spent so many years hating him, but Auberon was right, it was time she put her past behind her.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said sadly, ‘but he’s made it abundantly clear he doesn’t want me.’

  Ant walked back to the place where they’d left Josie, but she was no longer there. Where on earth could she have gone? Why couldn’t the wretched girl stay in one place? It was infuriating.

  Perhaps she’d gone back to the theatre. Harry had mentioned it earlier as the place where they’d been on their first date. Maybe if she were still feeling upset about Harry, she’d want to go there and remember a happier time.

  Bloody Harry. Stealing a march on him. He’d seen Josie first, in the bar at uni. He’d been the one who got to know her; inveigled himself into her crowd, turned up at her parties, and eventually wangled an invitation down here. They’d always got on well, and Ant had intended to ask Josie out, but then Kerry or Kelly got under his skin and he’d been distracted. By the time he realised his mistake, Harry had snuck Josie out from under his nose.

  At the time it had been utterly baffling. Harry was a good mate, but so quiet and retiring compared to Ant. What had Josie seen in him, that she hadn’t seen in Ant? After all, she had flirted with Ant quite a lot, and never paid any attention to Harry before that week. Ant wasn’t surprised it hadn’t lasted after they left university and all went their separate ways. It was clearly never meant to be. Like an idiot, he hadn’t kept in touch with Josie, and he was stunned when Harry had emailed him out of the blue to say they were an item again.

  Ant still didn’t get why Josie had chosen Harry to share her life with. He was so modest and unambitious. Surely a girl like Josie deserved someone with more get up and go? Ant had more money and prospects, was better looking, drove a
faster car. Hell, even her dad liked him better than he liked Harry. The more Ant thought about it, the more furious he became. He was going to go and show her what was what. How a real man behaved. Show her just how masterfully he could sweep her off her feet. Show her what she’d been missing.

  What about Harry? The responsible pricking of his conscience kept butting in. Ant ruthlessly repressed it. He hadn’t got as far as this in life paying too much attention to his conscience. What about Harry? He’d had his chance with Josie and blown it. Now it was Ant’s turn.

  Josie sat for a while staring out to sea, where a pale moon was just visible through the swirling clouds. So much for the exciting magical evening Freddie had promised. She was cross with everyone: Harry for being so frustrating, Di for the things she’d said, and Ant for, well, being Ant. God knows why he’d appointed himself relationship guru for the weekend, but he’d made a dreadful fist of it. She decided she’d preferred it when he was just playing the field.

  After a little while she got up. It was no good; she couldn’t stay here all night. Time to get home. Even if she ended up leaving them all in the annexe, and sleeping in her own bed. Thank God Mum and Dad had gone away for the night, she wouldn’t have any explaining to do. Time to sort everything out tomorrow.

  She was halfway down the path which led to the back of the theatre, when she saw torches dancing among the bushes.

  ‘Hello,’ called a quavering voice, sounding as if it was about to jump out of its skin any moment. ‘Is anyone there? Only we’re terribly lost.’

  ‘Where on earth are you trying to get to?’ Josie could make out three huddled figures in the gloom. On closer inspection she realised it was Tatiana’s retinue. What on earth where they doing out here at this time of night?

  ‘We’re looking for the theatre. Tati went out hours ago, and we don’t know what’s happened to her. We think that that Slowbotham fellow might have done something to her.’

  ‘He hadn’t last time I saw,’ said Josie with a grin. ‘She was auditioning for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’