by Liz Fielding
There was nothing for it but to drive to London and confront him, face to face. Scooping up one of the sandwiches Mrs Kennedy had made and grabbing up her keys from the kitchen table, she ran for her car.
Tom let himself into his apartment. It was immaculate. Everything was pristine. Characterless. Empty.
As different from Longbourne Court as it was possible for it to be. In a week that rambling house had become his home. A place where he felt totally at ease.
But it would be forever linked to Sylvie. Everything he touched, every room, would bring back some memory of a smile, a gesture.
He’d never be able to walk into the morning room without remembering what he’d said to her.
Would never see violets blooming in the wood without the scent bringing back that moment when he’d come so close to reaching out to her. Betraying himself.
He tossed the keys on the table. Rubbed his hands over his face in an attempt to bring some life, some warmth back to his skin.
Picked up one of the piles of mail that his cleaner had put to one side. She’d clearly tossed everything that was obviously junk mail and had sorted the rest into two piles. The stuff she knew was important she’d put in one, anything she was doubtful about in the other.
There wasn’t that much, considering how long it was since he’d been home, but all his business and financial stuff went to the office and most of his personal stuff too.
He began to shuffle through the envelopes, lost interest and tossed them back on the table, where they slithered on the polished surface and fell on the floor.
About to walk past, leave them, he saw a familiar square cream envelope, took a step back and then bent to pick it up.
It might have been coincidence that it was exactly the same as the envelope that he’d taken to the post office for Sylvie. It might have been if the handwriting hadn’t been the same.
When had she written to him?
There was no stamp. No postmark. No way of knowing how long it had lain here waiting for him to return. She must have delivered it by hand. She must have come here, pushed it through his letter box, waited for an answer that had never come.
She’d asked him if he’d got her letter and he’d thought she’d meant the one returning the money but he knew that it was this letter she’d been talking about and, with a sudden sense of dread, he pushed his thumb beneath the flap and, hand trembling, took out the single sheet of paper and opened it.
Dear Mr McFarlane
I’m writing to let you know that as a result of our recent encounter, I’m expecting a baby in July…
‘No!’
The word was a roar. A bellow of pain.
He didn’t wait to read the rest but grabbed the phone, put a call through to the house. It rang and rang and then the answering machine picked up. ‘There’s to be no damn wedding tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Do you hear me, Sylvie? No wedding!’
Then he tried her cellphone, but only got a voicemail prompt. He repeated his message, then added, ‘I’m coming right back…’
Then, in desperation, he called the Kennedys’ cottage.
Her car refused to start. Her beloved, precious little car that had never once let her down, chose this moment to play dead. The lights. She’d driven through a patch of mist and had turned the lights on. And had forgotten to turn them off.
It took her ten minutes at a trot to reach the Kennedys’ cottage.
‘Don’t you fret, Sylvie,’ Mrs Kennedy said. ‘You just sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea. Mr Kennedy’s at a darts match, but the minute he comes home he’ll get his jump-leads and fix your car for you.’
‘I can’t wait. I’ll have to call a taxi.’
‘I’ll do that while you get your breath back.’
There was a half an hour wait and, while Mrs Kennedy went off to make ‘a nice cup of tea’, she decided to try and call Tom again, but her phone, which had been working overtime all day, chose that moment to join her car and give up the ghost.
‘Stupid, useless thing,’ she said, flinging it back into her bag, too angry to cry.
It was nearer an hour before she heard the taxi finally draw up outside the cottage and she didn’t wait for the driver to knock but just grabbed her bag, kissed Mrs Kennedy and ran down the path to the gate.
And came to a full stop.
Leaning against the fearsome Aston, arms folded, was Tom McFarlane. And he didn’t look happy.
She opened her mouth. Saw what he was holding and closed it again.
Apparently satisfied, he straightened, opened the car door and said, ‘Get in.’
He didn’t sound happy either and while, as recently as sixty seconds ago, she’d been fuming with impatience to see him, talk to him, that suddenly felt like the most dangerous idea in the entire world.
‘You’ve got everything wrong, Tom,’ she said, her feet apparently glued to the path.
‘Nowhere near as wrong as you, Sylvie.’
‘I don’t actually think that’s possible,’ she said, finally snapping.
He was angry? Well, she wasn’t exactly dancing with delight either and, freed by righteous indignation, she swept down the path and, ignoring the open car door, she walked away from him and his car. She’d rather walk…
‘Sylvie!’ It was a demand rather than a plea. Then, with a sudden catch in his throat, ‘Sylvie, don’t do it…’ She faltered. ‘I’m begging you. Please…’
She stopped and, when he spoke again, he was right behind her.
‘Please don’t marry Jeremy Hillyer.’
It was true, then. He’d really thought she was going to marry Jeremy.
‘But you’ve been helping me all week,’ she said. ‘Coming up with great ideas for the wedding. This afternoon you wrote me a note wishing us all the best. What’s different now?’
‘Everything. I thought the baby was his. I was coming home two months ago. Coming to see you. I didn’t know if you’d even talk to me but I had to try. I was in the airport, the boarding card in my pocket when I saw you smiling out of the cover of Celebrity. Read about your “happy event”, that you were back with your childhood sweetheart.’
‘But I wrote to you, Tom. I told you about the baby. I asked you if you’d got it.’
‘I thought you meant the one about the money. My secretary emailed me to tell me that you’d returned it, asking me what to do with it, and I realised what you must have thought. It wasn’t like that, Sylvie. I’d always intended to pay you in full. The cheque I wrote, put in my pocket, was for your whole fee.’
‘Oh.’
‘I told her to give it to charity, if that’s any consolation.’ Then, ‘I didn’t get this letter until this evening, Sylvie. I didn’t know about our little girl…’
She blinked. ‘That’s impossible. I put it through your door myself. Two weeks after…’ She gestured helplessly at the gentle swell of her belly.
‘Which would have been perfect if I’d been there. I’ve been out of the country for six months, Sylvie. I only stopped to pick up my passport and then I caught the first plane with a free seat, just to put some space between us.’
‘Um…I thought you were going to Mustique…’
‘How could I go there after you and I…?’ And he was the one lost for words. ‘I hurt you, Sylvie. Made you cry. I’ve only made two women cry in my entire life.’
‘Your mother…’
“I’ll be all right. I have to go…”
His mother had said that. And so had she…
‘I was crying because you’d given me something so unbelievable, Tom. I’d been frozen, held in an emotional Ice Age. Too much had happened at once. I’d lost everything and then been betrayed…’ She looked up at him, wanting him to know that this was the truth. ‘I spent my life making perfect weddings for other people when I was unable to even share a kiss…’
‘Sylvie…’
‘I came straight back, as soon as I could, but you’d gone.’
‘I was in bits.
I thought you couldn’t wait to leave…Never wanted to set eyes on me again and who could blame you?’
She reached up, placed her fingers over his lips. ‘You are my sun, Tom. You looked at me and it was instant meltdown. You held me and your heat warmed me.’
‘But…’
‘The tears were pure joy, Tom. And the baby…’ She took his hand and placed it over the baby growing beneath her heart. ‘Our baby is pure joy too.’
‘She’s mine…’ His face, pale in the rising moon, glowed with something like reverence. ‘My little girl.’
She’d cried then and she was crying now. Silent tears that were falling down her cheeks as she said, ‘You have a family, Tom.’
For a moment they just stood there and then he said, ‘It’s not enough. I want you, Sylvie. I tried to get you out of my mind, tried to forget you, but it was no good. I…’ He stopped.
‘You what, Tom?’ She reached up, her palms on his cheeks, making him look at her when he would have turned away. ‘Say the words.’
‘I…I love you.’ Then, ‘I love you, but I’ve made a complete mess of it. It’s too late…’
‘Because of the wedding tomorrow? Is that the only thing standing between us?’
‘Sylvie…’ And this time her name was a tortured cry that rent her to the heart.
‘It’s a fantasy wedding, Tom. Not real. Just the “Sylvie Duchamp Smith” fantasy of what her wedding would be. If…when…she ever found a man she could spend the rest of her life with.’
She saw him wrestle with that.
‘But Jeremy…’
‘Is not that man. We met at a charity do. We were polite, we smiled at each other. Celebrity did the rest. I suspect they were hoping to provoke me into naming the real father of my child.’
‘But you’ve been ordering cakes. Food. Flowers. You’ve got an updated version of the dress you were going to wear the first time…’
‘The dress is nothing like the one that my great-grandma wore,’ she assured him. ‘I have an entirely different fantasy these days.’ Then, ‘I can’t believe you’d think I’d sell my own wedding to the media.’
‘I had the impression that you’d do anything for your mother’s charity.’
‘Some things are not for sale, Tom.’
Then, catching a flicker of light, the twitch of a curtain from the Kennedys’ cottage, she said, ‘They knew, didn’t they? They knew you were coming back.’
‘If you’d turned on your cellphone any time in the last two hours, so would you.’
‘My battery is flat. What did you say?’
‘“There will be no wedding…”’
‘None?’
‘Not tomorrow,’ he said, reaching out and touching her cheek. ‘But soon, I hope. Very soon. Because if you think you can have my baby without any expectation of commitment to her father, you’ve got another think coming.’
‘Is that right?’
‘And it’s my fantasy too, remember? I want the whole works.’
‘All of it?’
‘All of it. Everything, everyone. Except Celebrity. They can have their fantasy tomorrow, but the reality will be for us alone. Not just for a day, but for always.’ Then, as if realising that something was missing, he went down on one knee and, under a bright canopy of stars, he said, ‘If I promise to wear a purple waistcoat to match your shoes, will you marry me, Sylvie Smith?’
Four weeks after the Pink Ribbon Club Wedding Fayre featuring Sylvie Duchamp Smith’s fantasy wedding was a sell-out for Celebrity, Tom and Sylvie did it for real.
Sylvie arrived at the church on a traction engine that was all gleaming paintwork and brass. Geena had made her another dress-since, obviously, the groom had seen the first one. It wasn’t quite the same since she never repeated her designer gowns, but it was close. And Sylvie wore the purple shoes.
Josie had added a dusting of green glitter to her purple hair and, having been bribed with an appliquéd dress with a tiny little matching jacket and a pair of pale green silk-embroidered shoes, had surrendered her boots.
The god-daughters were adorable in lavender and violet. The page scowled, but that was only to be expected. Even a five-year-old knew that purple velvet breeches were an outrage. And, as she walked up the aisle on the arm of her father, the sunlight caught the diamonds in the tiara Tom had commissioned from a local jeweller for his bride.
The fair was a riot, the food was pronounced perfect, the children were sick on candyfloss-well, nothing was ever quite perfect-and Josie, now the partner in charge of weddings and parties, was overwhelmed with people demanding exactly the same for their own special day.
But, as Tom had told Sylvie, this was a one-off. For them alone.
Liz Fielding
Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain-with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the traveling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favorite authors and spends a lot of time wondering “What if…?” For news of upcoming books-and to sign up for her occasional newsletter-visit Liz’s Web site at www.lizfielding.com.
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