‘I can’t have feelings for Jed, not really,’ she said. ‘I only met him the day before yesterday, I think. We’ve spent a total of about three hours together. And we are the two most different people there can possibly be. So, no, I don’t have feelings for him. Not unless you count this gut-churning, heart-wrenching, clothes-ripping-off longing that I’m feeling in my chest.’
‘Oh my God,’ Alex smiled. ‘My mum says love doesn’t work on schedule. You just don’t know when it’s going to hit you, like a bolt out of the blue.’
‘Did you fall for Ruan at first sight?’ Tamsyn asked her, intrigued.
‘No,’ Alex laughed. ‘I thought he was rude and stupid. It was more like second or third sight, and even then that was more lust-based.’
‘OK, this is my brother we are talking about.’ Tamsyn pulled a face at Buoy, who seemed to mirror her disgust.
‘But you might have fallen in love with the vicar at first kiss?’ Alex asked. ‘Is that what you are saying?’
‘No, no, of course I am not,’ Tamsyn replied, between teeth gritted around pins. ‘How can I be? I mean, just because a person happens to be strikingly handsome, looks awfully good soaked through to the skin, is amazing with babies, and generous and kind and resilient and funny and human in ways that you never might have guessed, it doesn’t mean that anyone would fall in love with them after one very long, intense, firm-bodied, deeply erotic kiss. I’m not in love with him. I just can’t stop thinking about him, and I don’t understand why. I really want to see him, and I also never, ever want to see him again. What’s that about?’
‘It does sound an awful lot like you are in love with him,’ Alex suggested mischievously. ‘Because when you think about people they get together and they spend weeks playing it cool before they feel like they can say “I am in love with you”, but if you press them on it, if you really try hard to get them to remember when exactly the moment of love occurred, more often than not they will say, I knew right away, or within hours or days, and despite what I just said, when I think about it, the second I looked at Ruan, when we first met and he was so angry with me, there was this connection that flowed between us. Like someone had just thrown on a switch which I couldn’t turn off, even though I tried. I think sometimes love happens that way, all at once. It doesn’t mean it’s any less real.’
Tamsyn had stopped, her scissors in mid-air, and she tried to fathom the consequences of what Alex had said. She couldn’t be right about that, could she? Her head was just in a very romantic place because she was getting married, against the odds, and to her everything seemed covered in roses and love hearts. That wasn’t what had happened earlier that morning, was it? It hadn’t been love that had happened under the kitchen table, surely?
‘Well, I’m not sure it actually matters how I feel,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Not when he literally ran away from me in horror. And if he hadn’t, I don’t really see how a very sceptical agnostic who lives in Paris and whose world revolves around vanity and superficiality, could possibly fall in love with a man of God who lives in Cornwall and actively embraces the WI.’
‘Oooh, I wonder if the ladies of the WI go funny too when he actively embraces them,’ Alex teased.
‘You know, all it takes is a couple of stitches from me to cut off the circulation in your arms,’ Tamsyn threatened mildly. ‘No, it’s craziness. It’s the Thorn Birds syndrome. I’ve met a man so diametrically opposed to me and my life that I’ve just got in a bit of a muddle about him and his gold hair and his cool, silver-blue eyes, and that skin and his arms and the way he smiles with just one corner of his …’
‘Am I interrupting?’ Jed asked, as he arrived with a fitful and fed-up Mo on his shoulder.
Tamsyn, who had somehow managed to avoid having anything to do with him directly since the table incident, burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, which swiftly turned into a yelp as she got stuck with a pin in her bottom lip, making it bleed.
‘And then the barman said, “Why the long face?”’ Alex said randomly, to try and cover for Tamsyn’s manic behaviour.
‘Oh hello, Jed,’ Alex said. ‘We were just telling jokes.’
‘Right.’ Jed looked distinctly uncomfortable, although at some time since he’d pressed Tamsyn’s naked breasts against his chest and kissed her silly, he’d clearly showered and had a shave, maybe to try and cleanse himself after their encounter. ‘Mo’s had a feed, a burp and a change,’ he said, ‘but she won’t settle, and I don’t seem to be doing the trick. I thought maybe she wants a cuddle from you.’
‘I’ve missed her, too. Here,’ Tamsyn put down the scissors, patted herself for pins and took the tiny little person into her arms. At once Mo quietened and seemed content, and Tamsyn felt her own sense of unease dissipate.
‘Um,’ Alex said, after a moment or two, ‘I would leave, but I don’t know which way the door is.’
‘Here.’ Jed escorted her out, before returning with the blindfold. ‘I can take her again, if she’s settled.’
‘Have you got the carrycot?’ Tamsyn asked him, and he brought it in from outside. ‘I’ll hold her for a moment more and see if she’ll go down in it, but if not then I’m afraid I’ll have to bring her to you. How’s it going at the church?’
She thought it was best to press on as if nothing had changed between them; that was her favourite way of dealing with troubling issues, especially kissing-related ones, and she didn’t see any reason why that should change now.
‘Very well,’ Jed said. ‘It’s almost back to its old self, apart from the window, and the door still needs to be hung. That probably won’t happen in time, but I don’t suppose that matters. And the hassocks and wall hangings will be keeping the sewing circle in jobs for decades to come.’
‘Good,’ Tamsyn said, avoiding meeting his eye.
‘Great.’ Jed continued to stand there and Tamsyn waited, discovering that whatever it was he was about to say filled her simultaneously with hope and dread.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said finally, ‘for last night, for … your kindness.’
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Anyone would have done the same. Well, maybe not the taking off their clothes bit, but the rest of it.’
‘But I’m glad it wasn’t anyone,’ Jed told her, looking at her with his silver eyes. ‘I’m glad it was you, glad and … sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Tamsyn asked him.
‘I lost control a little,’ he said. ‘We both know you didn’t take your top off; it was me.’
‘Oh right, so we are going to talk about that bit then, the bit where we made out and then you ran away,’ Tamsyn asked him, her brow furrowed.
‘It shouldn’t have happened,’ Jed said.
‘Why?’ Tamsyn asked him. ‘Am I that repulsive?’
‘Oh no, is that what you think I think?’ Jed asked her, aghast. ‘Tamsyn, you are beautiful, gorgeous, desirable. And I do desire you, and I do want you, as much as I wanted you last night, but it can’t happen.’
‘Because of God, and all that?’ Tamsyn asked him, confused. ‘Because I know you said no sex before marriage, but you didn’t say anything about kissing.’
‘Because you are a kind, decent, honourable woman, who deserves a great deal more respect and care than I afforded you last night. I treated you like an object of desire.’
‘I didn’t really mind, though,’ Tamsyn offered rather weakly. ‘I mean, I was treating you in the same sort of way, I seem to remember.’
Jed blushed. ‘You deserve more, better than me. I’m damaged, broken. I’m not ready to be in another person’s life yet, not without dragging them down. And yes, because of God. Because my life is so different to yours. I don’t see how they could ever fit together.’
‘We only snogged,’ Tamsyn said, rather crossly. ‘I wasn’t proposing marriage to you.’
Jed sighed, running his fingers through his smooth blond hair.
‘We barely know each other, and that’s why you don’t understand what I’m trying to say. I can’t kiss you again, because kissing you again would mean that I would never want to stop kissing you, because it wouldn’t take me any effort at all to fall in love with you, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to fall in love with a woman who will never want what I have to offer her.’
‘Why, because I am such an awful ungodly prospect?’ Tamsyn asked him, bewildered by the feelings that were racing around in her chest.
‘Because before I kiss you again, I want to be the man that you deserve. The man that can make it through a thunderstorm without losing it, the man who stands by his conviction and his faith with a clear and strong conscience. The man you deserve.’
‘And don’t I get any say in this?’ Tamsyn asked him. ‘Because I’m not saying that I do want you just the way you are, but … what if I want you just the way you are? What if I think the way you are right now is incredibly lovely and sexy and great? Even if you do believe things that I don’t, couldn’t we just agree to disagree about that part?’
‘But … I mean, really?’ Jed paused a moment, to take in what she’d said. ‘You really feel like that?’
‘I’m not saying that I do feel like that,’ Tamsyn said carefully. ‘Not unless you want me to say that, in which case, I am.’
And then there was that moment, the moment that comes just before the one you see in the movies and read about in the books, when the hero sweeps the heroine (after carefully popping the baby in the carrycot) into the romantic embrace to top all romantic embraces, and the credits roll and the last page is turned. That pre-moment happened.
But the moment that followed wasn’t the one that Tamsyn was expecting at all.
‘Tamsyn!’
The world shifted under Tamsyn’s feet, and two realities collided so violently that it took more than a moment or two to understand exactly what she was looking at. It was Bernard. Not just a vision of him, some weird kind of hallucination created by her fevered and exhausted brain, it actually
was
Bernard, standing there in the Solar, next to Jed, his arms outstretched. And in the seconds that it took for her to process what was happening, he crossed the room, circumnavigated Mo’s carrycot without giving her so much as a second glance, and kissed Tamsyn on the mouth, a kiss which Tamsyn surrendered to as much out of shock as anything. All she could think was that this was the wrong moment.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Bernard told her, with barely a trace of an accent, as, like everything he embarked on, he had learnt English to perfection.
‘What are you doing here?’ Tamsyn said, feeling her face alight with embarrassment.
‘I’ve come for you, of course,’ Bernard told her, grinning at Jed with a sort of ‘Women, what are they like?’ expression. ‘To be your date at the wedding, just as you wanted me to.’
‘Mo and I will get out of your way,’ Jed said, reaching out for Mo.
‘Nice baby,’ Bernard said. ‘Something you want to tell me?’
‘No,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Jed, you don’t have to go, or take Mo.’
‘I think you’ve probably got a lot of explaining … I mean catching up to do,’ Jed said.
‘I’m sorry. I am Bernard du Mont Père.’ Bernard offered a hand to Jed. ‘I’m Tamsyn’s boss, and also her lover.’
Tamsyn knew perfectly well that Bernard’s English was good enough not to use that particular word without fully knowing what impact it would have on the conversation.
‘Jed Hayward,’ Jed shook his hand. ‘Tamsyn and I hardly know each other, it seems.’
Tamsyn watched dismayed as Jed and Mo left the room, and turned to see Bernard casting a critical eye over the pieces of Alex’s dress.
‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘It looks like a giant silkworm has thrown up in here.’ He laughed, but Tamsyn didn’t.
‘Why are you here?’ Tamsyn asked him.
‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ Bernard said, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her against him. It was funny; whenever she thought about Bernard, she imagined him quite differently from the man he really was. In her mind’s eye he was tall, muscular and deeply charismatic, which was the one thing about him that was incontrovertible. The truth was that Bernard had a knack for transmitting a personality into a room that was much bigger than he really was. In the cold light of day, he was actually maybe half an inch shorter than her, and though his eyes were as black as night, his mouth was sensuous and his beard was carefully trimmed, his build was slight, wiry, his hands delicate – artistic. What couldn’t be denied about him was the way he filled any atmosphere, overwhelming any space as if he was the sun, in all its blazing glory, demanding that the worlds and their moons revolve around him. And usually she was caught in the pull of his magnetic gravity.
Just not today; today, she found his presence deeply annoying. No, not his presence, his existence. It was his existence that riled her. Which, of course, she knew was completely unfair. Jed was right to run away from her; a man should run away from a woman who could fall in and out of love within a matter of hours. It wasn’t Jed who was the hot mess, it was her.
‘Of course I’m pleased to see you,’ she said, taking a breath and trying her best to remember the life that she had worked so long and hard to build up. ‘Of course I am. It’s just so unexpected. You’re planning a show, we’re in the middle of Autumn/Winter, you very nearly didn’t let me leave, so how on earth can you possibly be here?’
‘I saw you on Twitter,’ Bernard told her. ‘A friend called me to tell me about it, about you finding the baby. There are photos all over the internet and you looked terrible, and I thought perhaps you might need me to come and help you.’
‘Help me with the baby?’ Tamsyn was deeply confused.
‘Help you with your hair, darling. You look like you’ve put your finger in the socket and stood in a puddle.’
Tamsyn laughed, and suddenly she was quite glad to see him.
‘No, really, I thought you might need me, by your side.’
She was struggling to understand this gesture; it meant something, but she was unable to decipher what it was just yet.
‘Bernard … Thank you for coming, but honestly, you don’t have to be here. I’m really busy with the baby and the dresses.’
‘Ah yes,’ Bernard picked up the hem of the dress and examined it. ‘Charmingly naive and rustic, darling. Of course, not your best work, but I don’t suppose the yokels will know or mind; just please make sure no one associates “this” with my label and your work there.’