My friends and acquaintances surged around me, most of them saying “hello” and “good-bye” in the same breath. Did I feel like an archvillainess! And I could have had such a lovely time being fêted! Here came Mrs. Dovedale, Bunty Wiseman, and Sir Robert Pomeroy, all of them explaining at once that the Babcocks weren’t able to come because they couldn’t leave the dog, or was it that the dog wouldn’t let them leave the house? And Mr. Poucher hadn’t come for two reasons—he couldn’t leave his mother and he loathed parties. How silly, because this had been such a super get-together and they all hated to cut the evening short, but … The “buts” were still buzzing in my ears and Abbey and Tam were dragging on my arms until I felt like a mother gorilla, when I saw my chums Frizzy Taffer and Jacqueline Diamond coming towards me.
My eyes blurred with tears as the point sank in—with the brutal precision of a six-inch blade—that Ben was a prince among husbands and I was a lamentable excuse for a wife.
“You really don’t deserve him, darling!” Vanessa, the toast of all eyes, in a sleeveless, backless, virtually frontless green taffeta frock, whispered this home truth in my ear. And her words continued to beat upon my guilty conscience as I now lay in bed with a spouse who refused to talk even in his sleep and a clock ticking relentlessly towards dawn. A dawn when Ben would pick up where he had left off in being relentlessly understanding and obdurately affectionate until I was driven screaming from the house in the manner of a Gothic heroine in urgent need of a cliff from which to take a flying leap into oblivion.
My eyelids flickered and I saw my foot inch its way out of the sheet to dangle purposefully above the floor. No! I fought for physical and emotional control, thrusting my shoulders into the mattress and straightening my spine,
until I felt like a trampoline that could have bounced a half dozen or so gymnasts off the ceiling. I would
not
sneak out of bed, pick up a novel (preferably one by Zinnia Parrish), and sneak with it into the bathroom!
For last night I had learned the bitter truth. I was a romance novel addict, incapable at stopping at one page. And if I didn’t make a change in my lifestyle I would have more than a ruined surprise birthday party on my conscience. I’d end up losing everything that had meaning for me—my family, my home, my self-respect. My mind shied away from the image it projected of an unwashed hag, hair hanging in snakes, stumbling around a refuse pit, searching among the rubble for a tattered paperback with Karisma’s egg-stained face on the cover. No! It wouldn’t happen because I knew I had a problem, and I’d deal with it one day at a time. But—my foot quivered and inched towards the floor—one day was as good as another and tomorrow was yet another day. Surely there was no point in rushing things. I’d be so much more successful at beating this thing in the long run if I started from solid ground, having worked up my momentum. Quitting cold turkey wasn’t the answer. In fact I’d surely find I’d do best by cutting back, one novel at a time.
My eyes turned back to Ben as I gathered up my night dress, so as to prevent any telltale rustling, and tiptoed towards the door. He looked so dear, so unsuspecting in the depths of sleep. His black hair rumpled and his long eyelashes fanned out upon his cheek. A sob caught in my throat and I raced out onto the landing, without a glance at the bookcase, and along to the bathroom. Opening the door, I leaned against it for several tormented minutes before turning on the shower and stripping off my night dress. The bracing beat of cold water did a good job of restoring me to common sense, and I had just stepped out and was reaching for a towel when the door opened and Vanessa stuck in her titian head.
“Posing for
National Geographic
, Ellie?”
“If they need a headhunter for the centerfold!” I glared at her.
“You do look cute when you frown.” She smiled sweetly. “The lines on your forehead match your stretch marks.”
“If you’ll kindly excuse me”—I flexed my toothbrush with a view to scrubbing the smirk off her beauteous face—“I would appreciate a few moments’ privacy before beginning the day.”
“Oh, all right.” Vanessa peered over my shoulder into the mirror to groom an already perfect eyebrow with a coral fingernail. “But don’t waste time trying to make yourself look gorgeous, it doesn’t do to tangle with Mother Nature when she seems to have had it in for you from the beginning. Just
teasing
, Ellie darling!” My cousin backed strategically towards the door. “I’ve got coffee in the kitchen to warm us up before we set out.…” Her voice trailed gracefully away as she disappeared.
Set out? Where did the silly twit plan on going at five o’clock in the morning? Despite myself, I hurried through brushing my teeth. Curiosity nearly killed the cat when I tripped on Tobias outside the bathroom door and almost sent him flying over the banister rail. But five minutes later I entered the kitchen to find Vanessa looking as if she were doing a TV advert for a cappuccino machine. My birthday present cappuccino machine.
“What a cross face, darling!” Vanessa presented a perfect: profile as she filled two itsy-bitsy cups with the steaming brew, floated a dollop of foam on both, and set a coffee spoon tinkling in each saucer. “Anyone would think I climbed in the marriage bed with you and poor Ben, and here I was trying to be housewifely and helpful!”
It would have been inexcusably childish of me to have stood there stamping my feet while I pointed out that she had played with my machine before I had a chance to take it apart and try to figure out how the wretched thing worked. It would have been excessive to tell Vanessa that I felt violated, that she had taken away a piece of myself that I could never get back. So I lied and told her that if I looked cross, it was because I was dying for a cup of frothy coffee.
“Cheers!” I clinked cups with her and took a sip which drained my china thimble and left me with a foam moustache.
“Delicious, if I do say so myself.” My cousin perched on the table, golden legs swinging gracefully below her gauzy olive-green skirt, her head tilted so that her hair
tumbled away from the creamy column of her throat in a mass of rippling waves that managed to trap every bit of light in the room and turn it from copper to bronze and back again.
“You said something about setting out for somewhere.” I licked off my cappuccino moustache under cover of my saucer and felt better. It’s amazing how a half teaspoon of foam can help bridge the before-breakfast gap.
“Yes, darling, but don’t let’s rush.” Vanessa clasped her demitasse to her incomparable bosom and radiated soulfulness. “My life until recently has been such a rat race. Metaphorically speaking, one might say I have spent my existence in relentless pursuit of the perfect cup of cappuccino!”
“Oh, yes?”
“I’ve been shallow, Ellie, more interested in froth than in substance.” She dipped a fingertip into the puffy cloud on top of her cup and drew out a wisp of white which she wiggled in front of me before touching it to her coral lips. “But I promise you, darling, I’m a new woman since George Malloy came into my life.”
“Congratulations.” I set my Thumbelina cup and saucer down in the sink.
“Yes.” Her eyes sparkled like Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry in a crystal glass. “Now I shall have it all—beauty, taste, and fibre.”
“You could market yourself as a new brand of cereal,” I told her fondly.
“How can I convince you that I have changed to the point that my own mother—may her fox furs rot on their hangers—would not recognize me? Would it do the trick”—with silken ease Vanessa slid off the table—“if I told you that I am about to drag you off to church?”
“To St. Anselm’s?”
“It’s where I plan to be married.” She brushed past me on her way to the garden door. “Sure, I would prefer that the family kirk was Westminster Abbey and the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles were squabbling over which of them should have the privilege of giving me away, but I’ve become a realist, Ellie.”
“But why on earth do we have to go at this hour?”
“Because I’ve been lying awake half the night picturing
the ceremony through a dreamy haze of white lace and I can’t wait another minute to practice my grand entrance.”
“And you want me along so I can hum ‘Here Comes the Bride’?”
“I was hoping you could play the organ. You have to have some talents I don’t know about.”
“The church will be locked at this hour.”
“Then we’ll wake up the vicar. If her boss is on call at all hours, I don’t see why she shouldn’t be,” Vanessa tossed a raincoat at me, and by the time I had grabbed it up off the floor and stopped the door from slamming into me, she was already halfway across the courtyard.
It wasn’t raining, but it was certainly chilly enough for a coat. A sharp wind was coming in off the sea as we passed through the iron gates onto Cliff Road into the dawn. Vanessa’s tawny hair was the only splash of colour in what would otherwise have been a black-and-white movie scene. And as I plodded after her, still trying to get my arms into the raincoat sleeves, my imagination produced Karisma waiting for her inside the lichgate of the church. His seventeenth-century pirate’s shirt was as white and billowing as the sails of the ship that waited for him in Smuggler’s Cove. His expression was as bleak and impenetrable as St. Anselm’s tower until he turned and in the flicker of a blackbird’s wings she was in his arms, their flowing locks entangled, their lips entwined, and they were one breath, one heartbeat, one soul.
“You came, my entrancing firebrand.” He lifted his magnificent head but did not release her from his imprisoning arms. “No one—not your tyrannical mother nor the King’s men—shall part us. We will be wed before the cock crows.”
“It’s not a very big church,” Vanessa said, cruelly interrupting my fantasy.
“It’s big enough for the Chitterton Fells congregation,” I said tartly as I followed her through the lichgate and up the path that wended its mossy way between the churchyard, with its sleepy-eyed regiment of tombstones, and the rag-and-tangle vicarage garden.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine for your little Sunday get-togethers.” My cousin tucked her arm into mine. Probably practicing walking down the aisle with George Malloy. “But, Ellie darling, I don’t plan to have a
small
wedding. I’m not so selfish that I would deny all my friends and relations the pleasure of witnessing the splendour that is
moi
.” She paused as we rounded the bend in the path to face the church. “Something old, something new, something borrowed … oh, heavens, I’ve just realized something ghastly! I don’t have any women friends—we always seem to clash the way those navy-blue shoes of yours do with that brown raincoat. Would it be a frightful imposition, Ellie, if I asked to borrow some of your friends, just for the day?”
“All right”—I tried not to sound begrudging—“but you have to promise to return them in mint condition.”
“I’m not sure I’m frightfully keen on the bell tower.” Vanessa looked heavenward. “It’s hopelessly dated, don’t you think?”
“It is dated, 1131,” I said, “and no, I don’t think Eudora Spike would agree to take it down and store it in the crypt until after your wedding.” I had climbed the first steps towards the heavy oak doors of St. Anselm’s, when my cousin gave a bloodcurdling screech behind me.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, causing me to assume that one of the bushes hedging the wall beneath the stained glass windows had burst into flame. And when I turned, it was to discover Vanessa gesticulating towards the shrubbery. “Someone’s there! I saw a hand,” she exclaimed, “a surreptitious, black-gloved hand, creep around that corner over there.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I guess so.” Vanessa closed her eyes—carefully, so as not to crease her eyelashes—and followed me up the steps. “But let’s get inside the church before some ghoul from the graveyard tries to put the moves on me.”
“It is locked, my dears.”
“What?” In latching on to my cousin’s arm I caused both of us to stumble and slither on our behinds down onto the path. There a woman dressed all in black, from her unwieldy pre–World War I hat with its fluttering veil to her button boots, stood looking at us with a perplexed
expression. She was an old lady, eighty if she were a day; but her hazel eyes were as bright as a girl’s and her tissue-paper skin still held a hint of rosy blush.
“Forgive my impetuosity in accosting you.” She extended a pair of black-gloved hands towards Vanessa, who dragged me to my feet and pushed me to the fore. “It is a sad state of affairs when a church locks its doors at night.”
“There’s the fear of vandalism …” I stammered as is my wont when finding myself face-to-face with a local legend.
“What misguided thinking.” The ancient Lady in Black smiled as if in wistful memory of a kinder age. “The church that claims to welcome sinners should embrace the hooligan.”
“Possibly, but I see no harm in drawing the line at people who buy clothes off the rack.” Vanessa shuddered.
“Lay not up treasure upon earth, is that not what the Bible teaches? One would hope the clergy would apply that little rule to silver chalices and other religious whatnots along with other worldly goods.” Our new acquaintance tossed her bonneted head, providing me with a flash of how Vanessa might look and act as an octogenarian. “But never fret, my dear young ladies.” Here she gave a girlish giggle. “It so happens that I was here one night and saw where the silly old verger hid the spare key. And I have it here.” She reached into her coat pocket and produced said object.
“I don’t think we should creep into St. Anselm’s while Reverend Spike is tucked unsuspecting in bed,” I objected, picturing myself being drummed out of the Hearthside Guild. “We’ll come back at a more appropriate time and …”
“Cowardy, cowardy custard, Ellie can’t cut the mustard,” Vanessa chanted rudely. “Go rabbiting home if you wish, but I’m going up those steps with our delightful new friend. If I’m to be married here—”
“A wedding!” The Lady in Black spoke with a choke in her voice. “I was to have been married here when I was a dreamy-eyed girl of unsurpassed beauty and sparkling wit. My bridal gown was an angelic confection of ivory silk and lace imported from Paris. My bouquet was of apple blossom to match the wreath that was to encircle my
raven tresses, but, alas, my handsome groom failed to arrive at the church and I was destined to stand alone at the altar with my hand pressed to my broken heart while the organist played on and … on.…”