A Vintage Wedding
Contents
In a small Cotswold country town, Beth, Lindy and Rachel are looking for new beginnings.
So they set up in business, organising stylish and perfectly affordable vintage weddings.
Soon they are busy arranging other people’s Big Days.
What none of them know is that their own romances lie waiting, just around the corner ...
I live in the beautiful Cotswold countryside with my family, and I’m a country girl at heart. I started writing when my mother gave me a writing kit for Christmas, and once I started I just couldn’t stop.
Living Dangerously
was my first novel and since then I haven’t looked back.
Ideas for books are everywhere, and I’m constantly inspired by the people and places around me. From watching TV (yes, it is research) to overhearing conversations, I love how my writing gives me the chance to taste other people’s lives and try all the jobs I’ve never had. Each of my books explores a different profession or background and my research has helped me bring these to life. I’ve been a porter in an auction house, tried my hand at pottery, refurbished furniture, delved behind the scenes of a dating website, and I’ve even been on a Ray Mears survival course.
I love being a writer; to me there isn’t a more satisfying and pleasing thing to do. I particularly enjoy writing love stories. I believe falling in love is the best thing in the world, and I want all my characters to experience it, and my readers to share their stories
To find out more visit my website at
www.katiefforde.com
, Facebook and follow me on Twitter
@KatieFforde
.
Living Dangerously
The Rose Revived
Wild Designs
Stately Pursuits
Life Skills
Thyme Out
Artistic Licence
Highland Fling
Paradise Fields
Restoring Grace
Flora’s Lot
Practically Perfect
Going Dutch
Wedding Season
Love Letters
A Perfect Proposal
Summer of Love
Recipe for Love
A French Affair
The Perfect Match
To my lovely brides, Briony Wilson-Fforde and Heidi Fforde. You were both so beautiful – thank you for giving everyone such wonderful memories.
Huge thanks go to my daughter Briony and (now) daughter-in-law Heidi for getting married and giving me so much wonderful research material. Also to their wonderful husbands – Steve and Frank. I would thank the grandchildren too but they weren’t much help apart from being adorable which they don’t have to work at.
To the wonderful Lotte and Miles and The Prince Albert which is such an original and great pub it had to go in a book. Do call in if you’re ever in Stroud.
To The Old Endowed School which, along with The Prince Albert, has a starring role. The committee works so hard raising funds to restore this fascinating and very ancient building.
To the many people who helped make both weddings amazing, including The White Room who know how to make a bridal party feel special, Siobain Drury who took me to Birmingham Flower Market (at four o’clock in the morning), to Debbie Evans who as always gave me so much inside information about weddings (as well as doing everyone’s hair brilliantly). To my daughter’s bridesmaids, official and unofficial. Toni, Jo, Carrie, all the hens. You all made your contribution.
To my wonderful editors Selina Walker and Georgina Hawtrey-Woore who make everything better, in every way. To my amazing sales team Aslan Byrne, Andrew Sauerwine and Chris Turner. Also to Jen Doyle, Rebecca Ikin and Vincent Kelleher who perform magic, and I don’t mean this metaphorically.
To dearest, most fabulous Charlotte Bush and her team, including Rose Tremlett and Millie.
Never forgetting Richenda Todd who I utterly rely on and must cause to despair often.
And the ever patient, stalwart Bill Hamilton and his stellar team at A M Heath.
I always know I’m going to forget someone. I do hope it’s not you! It’s not that I’m not grateful but I have no memory …
Beth Scott glanced at the time, hurriedly disconnected Skype and then her laptop. She was aware that if she didn’t get a move on she’d be late for the event at the village hall. Although it didn’t sound all that exciting, and she had no idea what it was all in aid of, she had allowed herself to be sold a ‘lucky programme’ when she was in the village shop. To claim her prize she’d have to be there. Besides, and this felt very pathetic, she might meet someone: a potential friend or, better really, someone who might give her a job. She had lived alone in Chippingford for a week and, so far, had only spoken to people in the shop and her sister Helena, courtesy of Skype. She had been to far-flung friends for Christmas – not having gone home for the first time ever – and so hadn’t caught up with her old friends there. She considered herself borderline lonely and on-the-line in need of employment. She wasn’t completely broke, but she was having to be very careful with money.
Still, as she went out of her little rented cottage (a holiday let she was grateful to have been lent) and crossed the village green she felt again how lucky she was to have ended up in such a pretty spot. Not quite ‘chocolate box’, the village was pretty enough, with its trilogy of church, pub and shop all on the green and the school not much further off.
She arrived at the hall, which was behind the church, and realised it didn’t quite live up to the charm of the rest of the village. She opened the door feeling shy and flustered. She hadn’t even glanced in the mirror, she’d just pulled up the hood of her parka to cover her unfamiliar short hair and run out of the house. But the friendly expression on the woman standing just inside the door made all that unimportant.
‘Oh, hello,’ said the woman, ‘I’m so glad you came! I’m Sarah. We met in the shop?’
‘And you sold me a lucky programme,’ Beth reminded her. At the time Beth had been reluctant to spend a pound on something she couldn’t eat but now she felt it had been worth it. Sarah was attractive, middle-aged and looked as if she might be a little bit scatty. And it was almost as if she had been waiting for Beth.
‘This is my daughter, Lindy. She’ll look after you. There’s another person not yet of pensionable age in the corner. Maybe you’d like to join her?’
‘My mum assumes because we’re almost the only people here under fifty, we’ll become friends,’ said Lindy, leading Beth through the crowd. ‘She means well and was so pleased when she told me she’d sold programmes to two people she didn’t know. She might have discovered oil on the village green, she was so delighted.’
Beth smiled. ‘I’m Beth. And I can’t believe people would be all that thrilled to have their village green dug up for oil.’ She liked the look of Lindy. She too was just wearing jeans and a sweater under her jacket. Her honey-blonde hair was in a tangled knot on her head and she was wearing a Spider-Man badge.
Lindy got Beth’s little joke. ‘Bad example. But I’m sure you know what I mean.’
‘I do.’ She thought about her own mother. She grouped people together too. Only her typecasting was based on money, class or status.
Lindy went on shyly: ‘Mum thinks I desperately need to meet new people so if she ever sees someone she didn’t know from when I was at primary school, she falls on them and introduces us in the hope they could be what she calls “a bosom buddy”.’
Beth laughed. ‘And you’ve probably got loads of friends already.’ Lindy was pretty and seemed friendly, and she was local: she was bound to know plenty of people.
Lindy shook her head. ‘Not that many, actually. Most of them have moved away and Mum worries. Look, there’s Rachel. Mum said she’s from London. She lives in that house that’s had all the work done. She hasn’t been there long.’
‘Cool!’ said Beth. ‘Let’s join her.’ She felt encouraged. She liked Lindy already and was prepared to like Rachel, too.
Rachel was a bit older than she was, Beth decided. And she looked quite ‘London’ in a well-groomed, sleek way. Beth suddenly felt slightly grubby.
But in spite of her glossy, straightened red hair and possibly whitened teeth, Rachel smiled as if pleased to be joined by Lindy and Beth. ‘Hello, you must be Lindy …’
‘And I’m Beth.’
‘Rachel.’
Looking at her more closely, Beth thought Rachel must be lonely too; why else would she be so pleased to see a couple of women who were probably a bit younger and definitely less well dressed than her? If she hadn’t been in her house long, she might not have had time to meet many people.
There was a slightly awkward pause and then Lindy said, ‘I love your hair, Beth.’
Beth ran her hand over her head. Her very short haircut was extremely recent and she still hadn’t quite got used to it. ‘You don’t think it looks like I had it cut off for charity?’
Rachel and Lindy laughed. ‘No, not at all!’ said Lindy.
‘
Did
you have it cut off for charity?’ said Rachel.
‘No! Although I wish I had now, then there’d have been some point to it, rather than it being a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’ve always had very long hair, you see. My mother didn’t ever want me to cut it.’
‘It looks brilliant,’ said Rachel. ‘You’ve got the face for it. And it makes your eyes look enormous. Sorry, that was a bit personal.’
‘Sausage roll, anyone?’ asked a cheery-faced woman of substantial proportions holding a plate of them. ‘I made them myself.’
‘They are amazing,’ said Lindy. ‘Mrs Townley’s pastry is famous in the village.’
‘Thank you, Lindy. Glad to be appreciated,’ said Mrs Townley.
Beth remembered she hadn’t eaten much that day and helped herself. ‘Have a couple!’ insisted Mrs Townley.
‘It would be rude not to,’ said Lindy, encouragingly.
‘In which case,’ said Beth, and took two.
As she ate, Beth looked around and realised that without the throng of people the village hall would have been pretty dreary. The paintwork was green and maroon and needed redoing. The ceiling was high, with exposed beams and rafters, but it was in desperate need of either a good scrub or total redecoration. ‘This could be a lovely building,’ she said to no one in particular.
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Rachel. ‘But I tend to fall in love with old buildings.’
‘Please fall in love with this one,’ said Lindy. ‘The three groups who use it currently think it’s just fine as it is but Mum thinks the roof is about to either collapse or start leaking badly. She says unless people get together and do something about it, it’ll fall into total disrepair. She wants to form a “Save the Village Hall” committee.’
‘It would be an awful shame to let it just fall down,’ said Rachel, staring up into the rafters.
Beth stared up there too and found they didn’t look better with closer inspection.