by Jo Bartlett
‘Ready to leave, or ready to get married?’ She laughed at the look that crossed his face.
‘I meant ready to leave, but now I’m worried about what your answer to the other question might be.’
‘I’m more than ready to marry you. I have been since about an hour and a half after I met you.’
‘What took you so long?’ Brae pretended to tut. ‘I knew within the first ten minutes.’
‘What was it that convinced you that I was so unbelievably perfect!’ If he could tease her, then she was going to give as good as she got.
‘It was the strangest thing. I wanted to find out everything about you, but at the same time I felt like I already knew you really well.’ Brae cleared his throat, his jokey tone disappearing. ‘This is probably going to sound like the cheesiest line ever, but it was as if the one thing I’d been looking for all my life was right there in front of me.’
‘Luckily for you I love cheese almost as much as I love you!’ She grabbed hold of his hand, which was draped over her shoulder. ‘Can you believe that this time tomorrow, we’ll be married?’
‘You’ve got until seven o’clock tomorrow to jump into a car and head out of Port Agnes without looking back. Otherwise you’re stuck with me.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Anna squeezed his hand. ‘And don’t you even think about going anywhere either. One Port Agnes midwife being jilted on her wedding day is more than enough, thank you very much.’
‘Do you think this bothers Ella? Being so much a part of this wedding? I’d hate to think it brings back any difficult memories for her.’
‘As awful as it was to be dumped so publicly, she’s told me she’s really glad that it happened now. She loves Dan much more than she ever loved Weller. I think the problem is she spent so long convincing Dan that she never wanted to do the marriage thing again, he’s completely ruled it out now. One thing being involved in our wedding has done for Ella is to make her realise she would like to do it one day. Maybe not yet, but she definitely doesn’t want it to be off the table for good.’
‘Do you ever worry that we’re rushing things?’
‘Never. I was with Greg for years and we both know how that ended. Looking back, it just feels like wasted time, when I could have been with you.’ Anna widened her eyes. ‘Why? Do you?’
‘No. That’s exactly how I feel. I can’t believe you know everything there is to know about me and you still want to marry me!’
‘The more I found out about you, the more I fell in love with you.’ Anna smiled. Some people needed surprises, but she was more than happy knowing Brae inside and out and understanding exactly where she stood. Anything else and he wouldn’t be the man she loved.
Anna hadn’t wanted the formality of a wedding rehearsal dinner, but having a meal with Dan and Ella didn’t seem like making a fuss; they did it all the time anyway. They’d booked a table at the hotel on the Sisters of Agnes Island, where Brae had proposed. The island was opposite the harbour, but at high tide it could only be accessed by boat. The hotel had its own launch and they were due to catch it at seven-thirty to make their table at eight.
Even though it was still light outside, the hotel on the Sisters of Agnes Island had lanterns lining the path all the way from the jetty to the hotel entrance ready to illuminate the darkness. There were thousands of fairy lights strung up in the trees outside, which would be lit-up beautifully by the time they left, as well as a series of sweet-smelling flower arrangements mounted on podiums lining the corridors. No wonder it was booked out for weddings so far in advance. The hotel had won a series of awards over the past year and even getting a table there was a challenge now. If Anna and Brae had wanted to get married in the beautiful Victorian conservatory where the weddings at the hotel took place, they’d have had almost a two-year wait.
A huge ice sculpture of a cherub dominated the centre of the conservatory, where they were having pre-dinner drinks. It was in almost the same spot where Brae had dropped down onto one knee without any hint of the self-consciousness that Anna knew he struggled with at times. He’d looked up at her and she hadn’t even needed to think about her response.
Maybe it was dangerous to trust him as much as she did. She’d been hurt often enough in the past to know that people were more than capable of causing pain to those they professed to love, but somehow she just knew that wouldn’t happen with Brae. All her married friends had warned her to expect pre-wedding jitters, and Gwen, the matriarch of the midwifery unit, had reminded her that it was never too late to change her mind, not even on the day of the wedding itself; a comment that had earned her an uncharacteristically sharp look from Ella. All the advice was well-intended, and it was pretty much what her parents would have said had they still been around. She didn’t need any of it, though.
‘Champagne for the bride- and groom-to-be, or do you want a brandy to calm your nerves after that boat ride?’ Dan looked at Anna and Brae as he stood at the bar. ‘I’m still quite surprised you and Ella agreed to the boat trip over here, after what happened in the storm.’
‘Nothing was going to stop me getting here to try the dark chocolate and clementine parfait we saw in that Cornish Life article about the hotel. My mouth waters every time I think about it.’ Ella’s stomach rumbled exactly on cue.
‘I think you’ve made your point!’ Brae grinned. ‘Hopefully we can all forget that the storm ever happened and concentrate on all the good things. It seems really easy tonight, knowing Anna’s going to be my wife by this time tomorrow.’
‘Romantic, but the parfait is definitely the lure for me too!’ Anna laughed, as Brae gave her a playful nudge. ‘Luckily the hotel’s boat is a bit less ramshackle than that thing the two of you set out to sea in. It might be the middle of summer, but that doesn’t stop the Atlantic breezes hitting the coast hard, like they are tonight. So, it’s a good job we could sit inside on the way over, otherwise I’d have been celebrating my first anniversary before I could get my hair back under control again.’
‘I think an evening like this calls for champagne to toast our best friends on the eve of their wedding.’ Dan turned away and spoke to the barman, and Anna couldn’t help smiling. Brae and Dan were right, there was so much to celebrate, and not just the wedding. Ella was really close to hitting her target of 10,000 signatures and she’d raised a phenomenal amount for the lifeboat fund so far. Brae had been shortlisted for the regional final of the Fish and Chip Shop of the Year award, and Dan had just taken a commission for a painting that would pay his bills for six months, even if he didn’t take on any more property renovations for a while.
‘I know the two of you are probably going to laugh at this, but would you mind if Anna and I popped out for a second to FaceTime Claudine and check on Jones?’ Brae looked towards Dan and Ella as the waiter went off to get their order. ‘We’re not going to get a chance to see him until after the wedding and I want to make sure he doesn’t forget me!’
‘Anyone who looked at you would never guess what an old softie you are!’ Dan grinned. ‘Of course we don’t mind, just don’t be too long or we might start the champagne without you.’
FaceTiming a dog from the gardens of the hotel probably was a bit ridiculous, but if Claudine thought so she seemed more than happy to humour them. Jones obligingly licked the screen of Claudine’s phone when Brae requested a goodnight kiss from the dog they were both equally besotted with, but Anna wanted to make sure she wasn’t completely upstaged on the eve of their wedding.
‘I never thought I could be this happy.’ Turning to him she took a step forward until their bodies were touching. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow to come and to tell the world exactly how much I love you. I don’t care how corny that sounds.’
‘It doesn’t, not to me, and I can’t wait either. I just don’t want to make anyone too uncomfortable when they tell me I can kiss the bride, so I’ll have to rein it in a bit tomorrow. But, if you don’t mind, seeing as there’s no one out here but us, I’m going t
o show you exactly how I’d really like to kiss you.’
‘I think I can handle it!’ She was still grinning when Brae kissed her, the passion behind it more than living up to his promise. There’d been times in the past when Anna had considered herself incredibly unlucky, losing the two people she’d loved the most so quickly. Then she’d found Brae, and to have known so much love from three amazing people in her life made her the luckiest person there was.
When they’d eventually made it back inside the restaurant, the first bottle of champagne didn’t stretch to toasting all the things they had to celebrate, so they shared a second bottle over dinner. By the time Brae went back with Dan to spend his last night as a bachelor at Mercer’s Row, and Anna went back to the cottage, with Ella for company, she was completely exhausted, but happier than she could remember being in years. It might have been down to the champagne, but against expectations, Anna had fallen into a deep sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. If only she’d made it all the way through the night, everything would have been so different and she might still have felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
19
Anna wasn’t sure if she’d been having one of those dreams where you fall and jolt yourself awake, or if it was something else that had woken her with a violent shudder. Either way, she was instantly wide awake, her brain racing through a mental checklist of every aspect of the wedding – despite her attempts to drown out her internal monologue by playing sleep sounds on her phone.
It was one of those horrible sensations, like being certain you’ve forgotten something vitally important when you set off on holiday, but having no idea what it was. It was almost four a.m. by the time she realised what it was – she’d forgotten her parents. Not literally, of course, but her decision not to make a speech at the reception and not having anyone at the wedding who’d known them personally, other than Anna, meant their absence would feel all the more marked. She needed to acknowledge them properly, but not even sleep deprivation could convince her to make a speech. She could manage a toast, though, and now all she needed was the perfect quote to sum up everything they meant to her.
Brae had a whole shelf of reference books in the study, a room he mostly used to do the books for the fish and chip shop. But she’d caught him in there several times, poring over a book of quotes when he’d been preparing his vows and wedding speech. There had to be something in there that would help her come up with the perfect thing to say.
Creeping downstairs so that she didn’t wake Ella, she stepped over the stair that always creaked the loudest and headed into the study. There were two books of quotations on the middle shelf and Anna picked one out. The first quote she saw said something about no one understanding parental love until they were parents themselves, and it was all she could do not to slam that book shut. For the next twenty minutes or so, she felt like Goldilocks. Some of the quotes were too bland and some were two flowery, but then she found it, the perfect quote:
‘Remember me and a part of me will always be with you.’
It was a quote from The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent, and it summed up exactly what Brae had said to her: that her parents would be a part of everything she did, and part of the lives of any children they might have – genetic or otherwise – for as long as she remembered them.
Sliding the books back onto the shelf, she breathed out. She was ready now, to toast her parents, to thank them for all they’d done for her and to acknowledge that they were part of her forever. For a whole ten seconds she was bathed in a strange sense of calm, and then her fingers brushed against the spine of another book, her eyes immediately drawn to the wording. It was a book of baby names.
Pulling it out, she opened the front cover and read the handwritten words inside:
Ideas for baby Penrose-Hart
Anna knew all about Julia Hart, Brae’s former fiancée, who he’d been due to marry when he left the Navy. It hadn’t worked out and, after everything Brae had told her, Anna had never felt threatened by his past relationship with Julia. Until now. She’d had no idea they’d got as far as talking about babies. But then didn’t everyone who got engaged have that conversation to find out whether or not they were on the same page about wanting children? Of course Brae would have said yes and, at ten years younger than Anna, Julia would have had years to fulfil that dream. The idea that they’d had a baby name book, though, and that it had meant enough to Brae for him to hold on to it for all this time, made it feel as if it had been rolled up and shoved down Anna’s throat.
She should have just shut it, put it back on the shelf, and carried on. Brae had told her a hundred times that all he needed was her, and she’d believed it, because in the end she’d realised that all she needed was him. But, confronted by the book of names he’d looked through with his fiancé, imagining what their child might be called, she couldn’t help turning the pages.
She got to the Cs and the name Cameron, before she saw the first writing in the margin. The words ‘Yes or No?’ were written in black next to the name, in handwriting she didn’t recognise. Below it, in red and in Brae’s distinctive handwriting, were the words ‘love it!’
The tears that sprung into Anna’s eyes might have been irrational and even self-centred, but she couldn’t stop them. Brae had picked out baby names with another woman that he was never going to get to use. Even if they were selected to adopt, they’d never get to pick their child’s name. It was stupid, such a small thing in the scheme of what it meant to be a parent, but it felt like just one more thing that Brae was being robbed of because he’d chosen her. Even as she tried to tell herself that was the most important thing in all of this – he’d chosen her – she didn’t believe it. She needed to speak to him, to hear him say it didn’t matter, that there wouldn’t always be a part of him that grieved for the baby who would have been called Cameron, or one of the other names he’d told Julia he’d love to call their child. And he’d kept the book; that had to mean something, even if he never admitted it.
Reaching for her phone, she hesitated. How many times was she going to need Brae to reassure her before she believed him? She hated herself for it, but she loved him too much to stand in the way of what he wanted. They could get ten years down the line before the grief for those unfulfilled dreams suddenly got much bigger. Brae might be all the family she needed, but she couldn’t bear to lose a second one. Losing her parents had been out of anyone’s control and she could give up the chance of being with Brae for something that might never happen. She kept coming back to the one thing that was fact – he’d kept the book and the truth was staring her in the face. He’d wanted a baby, imagined it and even got halfway to naming it…
Her fingers were still hovering just above the phone, not sure whether to text him or just try to focus on all the things he’d already said to convince her that none of this mattered, when it started to ring – making her body jolt again, just like it had when she’d woken up. For a split second she thought it might be Brae, somehow sensing she needed to speak to him – which even without inheriting her mum’s superstitious mind, she would definitely have taken as a sign.
‘Hello.’ The clock in the study said it was four fifty-seven. Never a good time to get an unexpected call.
‘I’m so sorry to call you this early, Miss Jones, but we wanted to give you as a much notice as possible.’ The woman’s voice on the other end of the line sounded close to tears. ‘This is Melanie Slater, the manager from the Red Cliff Hotel, I’m afraid there’s been a fire.’
‘Oh God, is everyone okay?’ If anything was going to put Anna’s worries into perspective, this was it. She’d chatted to a group of older people who’d been checking in for a short break while she’d been in the reception area the day before. They’d been excited to hear she was getting married and wished her all the best. The thought of them being caught up in the fire was the first thing that crossed her mind.
‘We got everyone out and we’re making arrangements to move
all the guests to different hotels, which is the good news.’ Melanie cleared her throat. ‘But the fire started in the corridor between the main hotel and the ballroom, where the annexe bedrooms are. One of the guests lit some candles and left them unattended when they went to dinner, and the fire brigade think the curtains caught alight. By the time the smoke alarms went off the sprinklers didn’t have a chance.’
‘That’s where my room is… my dress is in there and everything.’ Anna was trying not to panic, but it was almost impossible.
‘It’s awful, the rooms in that corridor are completely gutted and there was nothing we could rescue from yours – it was right next to the one where the fire started. The ballroom itself is badly smoke damaged, but the water damage the firemen caused putting out the fire is even worse. I’m so sorry, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to salvage anything and obviously we aren’t going to be able to host the wedding.’
‘No one else is going to be able to do it at this short notice either, are they?’ It was more of a statement than a question.
‘I’m happy to ring around a few places for you, but what with it being one of the biggest weekends of the summer for weddings…’ Melanie trailed off. They both knew it was impossible.
‘I think it’s better if I just accept it’s not going to happen.’ Anna screwed up her eyes to try to stop the threatened tears, but it was useless. ‘There are so many people I need to contact, to let them know the wedding’s not going ahead.’
‘I wish there was something I could do.’ Melanie sounded like she was crying now, too.
‘So do I, but it’s not your fault.’
‘If you think of anything, this is my personal mobile number, just give me a call.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do, but thank you.’ Anna stared at her mobile as she ended the call, her shoulders heaving as she started to sob. She hated herself for being so devastated when the important thing was that everyone was okay. It wasn’t the end of the world, but that didn’t stop it feeling like it. She might not believe in omens, but the wedding venue burning down hours before the ceremony was a pretty bad sign by anyone’s standards. Maybe her mother had been right after all and things really did happen for a reason. After all, she’d have plenty of time to talk to Brae about the baby book now and find out exactly how much those dreams meant to him.