She pulled away to look him in the eye. ‘I feel so stupid for feeling so heartbroken.’
‘You’re not stupid,’ Jed said, kissing her gently on the mouth. ‘You’re the best woman I have ever met, Tamsyn.’
‘So,’ she said, taking a step back from him and lifting her chin, ‘I will see you around, Vicar. Better get back to that wedding. I’ve got an appointment with the karaoke machine.’
‘Goodbye Tamsyn,’ Jed said as she walked away, determined not to look back. ‘See you around.’
St Piran’s was still full of the wedding decorations as the congregation filed in for the Sunday service, which was billed as a service of thanks for no loss of life during the floods. It was just as packed as it had been for the wedding, one week and one day before. The only two people who weren’t there this time were Alex and Ruan, who had disappeared to the lighthouse at some point after their wedding, and no one expected them to show their faces again for some time.
It had been an interesting week, one in which Tamsyn had kept herself very busy so that she didn’t have to think about the fact that she’d fallen in love with the one man she couldn’t have. Laura and Keira had stayed on a little longer to help her find a place to rent, a top-floor apartment with views looking out over the estuary and a balcony where she could sit and eat croissants, assuming another hurricane-force wind wasn’t about to sweep through the poor battered town and take her with it.
She had been in touch with Bernard again, emailing him her official letter of resignation, and then making sure he emailed his carefully worded press release about her to all the relevant trade press and fashion magazines. And she helped anyone and everyone who needed it. She helped Sue clear up Castle House after the sick and the homeless gradually began to return back home. She helped Eddie, Rosie and Lucy clean the pub and pump water out of the cellar. She’d gone to Kirsten to see her room in the hostel and bought her a new pair of curtains and a second-hand TV, and when Sue said Jed was looking for people to coordinate a clothes drive for those who had lost everything except what they were standing up in, she’d turned up at the church hall and worked quietly and methodically, organising all the donations into groups according to size, age and gender.
Jed had paused by the table she was working at for a moment, and their eyes had met. She thought he might have been about to saying something to her, but there was just so much that couldn’t be said that small talk seemed pointless. Instead he nodded and went on his way.
Which was when it hit Tamsyn, rather like a bolt from above, and she knew what she had to do.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Laura whispered in her daughter’s ear as they slid into a pew at the back.
‘Yes,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, but are you really, though?’ Cordelia leant over from the pew behind, where Keira was attempting to entertain the twins with an iPad, even though one iPad between two four-year-olds was never going to cut it.
‘Are you sure that you want to be a singer?’ Tamsyn asked her.
‘Yes,’ Cordelia said.
‘And are you sure that you loved Dad from the first moment you set eyes on him?’ she asked her mother.
‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘But …’
‘And are you now sure,’ Tamsyn turned to Keira, ‘that you should have just forked out for two iPads?’
‘I really am,’ Keira said with a resigned sigh.
‘There you are then,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I’m sure this is the right thing to do. I’ve even googled it, and everything.’
The three other Thorne women exchanged glances, but they all knew, because they were all exactly the same, that once a Thorne had made up their mind to do something, they couldn’t be dissuaded. No matter how foolish their actions might be.
Tamsyn waited for the end of the service, the part where the school band that was standing in for the wrecked organ was due to strike up, but the school band happened to be led by one of the girls she had spoken to on that first night at Castle House, and she knew not to start playing when Jed signalled to her.
This was it, Tamsyn thought. This was the defining moment of her life.
‘I have something to say.’ She got to her feet and then realised that the words hadn’t actually come out, out loud. Clearing her throat, she tried again.
‘Um, hello, everyone!’ she called out, so that everyone in the church twisted in their pews to look at her. ‘Hi!’
She waved, and then regretted it.
‘I have something I’d like to say to the vicar, does anyone mind? If I say something to him, the vicar?’
She was met by a chorus of curious no’s.
‘Tamsyn …’ Jed’s gesture was rather hopeless; it seemed he was starting to get to know the resolve of the Thorne women too.
Tamsyn made her way into the aisle and walked up to the front.
‘Jed Hayward, you are a vicar and I am a fashion designer. And you believe in God and I might believe in some sort of design in the fabric of the universe, maybe. You have principles, and I’ve shopped there once. You are a good, decent, kind, strong and frankly damn gorgeous man. And I’m … well, I’m just me, really, a woman who for more than a week now has not been able to find a pair of hair straighteners in the whole of Poldore. But I have helped a baby and a mum get back together, got a teenager back on her feet and I have made beautiful dresses for my brother’s wedding. And I have held you in my arms and known what it was like to find pure joy.’
There was gasp, and a scandalised murmur ran around the church.
‘Yesterday you asked me if I could promise for ever. And I’m here to tell you the answer, and the answer is no. I can’t promise for ever. Not if for ever means one more second not at your side, one more minute when I can’t take your hand, another second when you don’t know that, for reasons known only to your boss and the universe, I have fallen in love with you and I can’t live without you. Jed, I love you, I do. And I know we are two very different people, but did someone say that the greatest of all things was love, and I really think we have that. I really think we have love.’
‘Tamsyn,’ he spoke her name, but she gestured for him to let her go on.
Tamsyn paused and took a deep breath, fear coursing through her veins as she prepared herself for the greatest gamble of her life. ‘Did you know if we start posting our banns now, we could be married in six weeks’ time?’
This time the gasps were accompanied by shrieks, and a yell or two.
‘Tamsyn?’ Jed smiled at her, shaking his head. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I guess I’m saying let’s try this your way. Let’s try for ever,’ Tamsyn said. ‘And I’m asking you to marry me, no wait, get married to me, in this church, in six weeks’ time, because I don’t want to wait one second longer than that to be your wife.’
A pin could have dropped in the church and you would have heard its metallic chime as it hit the floor, as everyone turned to look expectantly at Jed.
‘Do you mean it?’ he asked her, walking down the aisle towards her.
‘I’ve honestly never been more serious about anything in my life,’ Tamsyn said.
‘Then yes, Tamsyn Thorne,’ Jed took her hands as he reached her. ‘Yes, I will marry you.’
And that might have been the first time in the four-hundred-year history of St Piran’s that the congregation went wild.
It was warm, very warm, and Tamsyn could feel the heat of the day on the back of her neck, having piled all her hair into a bundle of loose curls, which Keira had threaded through with flowers for her, pink sorrel and white daisies.
‘Are you thinking of doing a runner?’ Ruan asked her as they stood outside the church in near silence. It couldn’t have been a more placid day; there wasn’t a hint of wind, and the sea was the purest sapphire blue. Most of the town was inside St Piran’s already, and they’d had to bring in extra seating. Everyone wanted to be there on the day that the vicar married an agnostic he’d only just met. They were the talk of the town, or more likely the county – no, actually, they’d been talked about even further afield than that. Bishops had discussed them, and Tamsyn’s status as a non-believer; they had travelled to meet with senior clergy, who counselled them in marriage, and what their life would be like together, and how it might be impossible for them to make it work when at their core they were so different, finally meeting with Jed’s boss, the Bishop of the Diocese.
‘But we’re not that different,’ Jed had said, reaching out to take Tamsyn’s hand. ‘And I’m not the first clergyman to marry someone who isn’t devout. We both believe in the same things: community, decency, faith, caring for others and, above all, love. Tamsyn believes in those things too, as she’s shown more than once in the weeks that I’ve known her. She’s totally revitalised the Youth Homeless Project in Poldore, she’s getting the kids work experience, mentors … She’s done so much to help the town get back on its feet after the storm; she’s supported my verger during her recent difficulties, and is helping her settle into life as a mother. And all while she is setting up her own business … And more than that,’ Jed had turned to look at Tamsyn, and she felt the heat rise through her from her toes upward, and wouldn’t have been at all surprised if there was steam coming out of the top of her head, ‘I love her. More every day.’
The Bishop had said a little more about how very quick it was, and what was the hurry. He’d pointed out that although there was no actual rule against marrying someone of a different faith or no faith, he was more worried about the pressures that might be put on the marriage as time went by. And then it was Tamsyn’s turn to speak.
‘I believe in him,’ she said, looking at Jed. ‘He’s been through so much. He’s still overcoming so much, and yet look at everything he does for the people around him. As well as being really quite gorgeous.’
Jed closed his eyes, but luckily the Bishop laughed.
Tamsyn continued, ‘I admire the way he lives his life, I admire his values. And I will be a really good vicar’s wife. I will; I’ve found a blog on it already, where there are loads of vicars’ wives offering tips and a support group. I don’t doubt we’ll have hard times, because everybody does. But I also don’t doubt that we will find a way through them, together.’
The Bishop sat back in his chair, smiled and wished them the very best of luck, which wasn’t a blessing, exactly, but it was what Jed had needed to hear, and Tamsyn was grateful.
The days before that meeting, and afterwards, had been days of wonder, truly.
On the day she had proposed to him, Tamsyn had sat on a pew at the front of the church and waited as the congregation, slowly, very slowly, because they all wanted to see what would happen next, filed out of the church. Almost half an hour passed as Jed said goodbye to his flock, answered questions, fended off jokes, and Tamsyn sat perfectly still watching the sunlight dappling through the stained glass.
Eventually she heard the mended door close behind her and Jed’s footsteps walking up the aisle towards her.
‘I put you on the spot a bit, didn’t I?’ she said. But he said nothing, taking her hand and leading her out of the church and through the vestry, out through the funny little door and into Kissing Alley.
‘You asked me to marry you,’ he said finally as they stood there in the shade of the secluded spot.
‘I did a bit, yes,’ Tamsyn admitted.
‘Because you are in love with me?’ Jed said. ‘I mean really, like, for life? It’s not just the lure of the dog collar?’
Tamsyn had laughed a lot, and Jed had flushed red, smiling as he waited for her to stop.
‘Is that a thing? Vicar-fancying?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ he said.
‘Well, no, it’s not just that,’ Tamsyn took a step back from him, turning away a little. ‘No one expects to fall in love with a vicar she’s only just met; no one. But you … you make me believe in life, and in people, and in possibilities. And you make me want to be better, to be true to myself, to be happy. And you make me want to take your clothes off, quite a lot, if I’m honest. And to be with you, I have to be brave, braver than I have ever been. To be with you I have to be certain, and now that I know I am, then what else is there to do but to ask you to marry me?’
‘Even knowing what you know, about the PTSD, knowing it’s still there? Because I want you to be sure.’
‘The way you handle that only makes me love you more,’ Tamsyn told him. ‘And if you’ll let me, I’ll be there with you, helping you get better.’
There was silence behind her, and Tamsyn closed her eyes for a moment.
And then she felt Jed’s fingers in her hair, sweeping it aside as he kissed the back of her neck, turning her to face him.
‘I didn’t think I could ever be this happy,’ he told her. ‘I love you, Tamsyn.’
‘You do know we are standing in Kissing Alley, right?’ Tamsyn smiled. ‘Be rude not to.’
What wonderful weeks had followed, what blissful times, getting to know more about the man that she felt she already knew in the truest way: they argued over films and music, debated long into the night about books and politics and told each other all of their secrets, all of their hopes and dreams. And best of all, there had been a lot more kissing, headier, glorious, delirious kissing, so much so that sometimes Tamsyn worried that when they were actually married, nothing would get done.
And when she thought about what she’d had with Bernard, and what she had found with Jed, she laughed at how naive she had been to think that Bernard could ever have made her happy. She was making him happy, though, as her coats had featured in all the previews of his new ready-to-wear range in the fashion magazines across two continents, and he had been photographed in Milan with an Italian movie star who was a foot taller than him, looking like the cat that got the cream. And yet when Tamsyn looked at her designs with someone else’s name on them, she discovered that she couldn’t care less. Because she knew it wasn’t her best work; her best work, her career-defining work, was yet to come.
Catriona turned out to be a natural mother. Mo had stayed with Tamsyn for another two weeks, as she recovered; one week while Catriona was in hospital, although Tamsyn took the baby to see her mother every day, and one week after she was discharged. And then for the first few nights Tamsyn had stayed with Catriona in her newly decorated house, the first of the wrecked cottages to be put right, the townspeople of Poldore having made sure it would be ready for Catriona to bring her baby home. And although Tamsyn remained as one of Mo’s official carers, until Tess decided to sign her off completely, she felt like her job was done. In the weeks since she and Buoy had first found the baby, Mo had blossomed, putting on weight, hand over chubby fist, smiling at everyone, guzzling milk like there was no tomorrow and becoming really quite a beauty. And as she flowered, so did her mother, and as Catriona’s confidence grew, so did her happiness. And before long, she could be seen going about her verger duties again, with Mo tucked cheerfully into a sling, the pair of them inseparable. At some point, Tamsyn didn’t know when, Catriona must have decided to do what Jed had advised, which was to contact Mo’s father, and to his credit he had arrived in Poldore only a few days later to meet his daughter. Between them they were working out the best way for him to be part of Mo’s life, and the more Tamsyn saw of him and Catriona together, the less she found herself surprised if he didn’t end up being part of Catriona’s life too.