The Runaway Bride, page 24
‘It’ll be a little while before you’re fully healed though. And I like looking after you.’ He opened the taxi door for me. ‘My lady.’
When I got back to the camper and unzipped the awning, I gasped.
There was a string of golden lights hanging all around the little tent, twined with single roses. It looked like an enchanted bower. Jack darted ahead of me and lit a couple of candles he’d placed on the table.
‘Jack, it’s beautiful,’ I breathed. ‘Why did you do all this?’
‘For you.’ He took me in his arms. ‘A welcome home present.’
‘So that’s why you didn’t want to pick me up in the van.’ I kissed the tip of his nose. ‘Thank you.’
‘Couple of friends who’ve been dying to see you too.’ He let me go and went to open the door of the camper. Our two dogs burst out, yipping excitedly as they threw themselves at me.
I laughed, crouching down to let them lick my face. ‘Aww. Missed you too, girls.’
Jack squatted by me and put his arms around my waist, kissing my cheek. ‘It’s good to have you home again, Kit.’
I looked around the awning, bathed in flickering candlelight and filled with the fresh, uncomplicated scent of roses. I looked at Jack, and the two happy dogs, their tails wagging vigorously. My little family. Despite all the soap-opera drama of the last few days, the heartache, the loss, the betrayals, a feeling of contented warmth filled me. For the first time in a long time, I felt genuine, unalloyed happiness. I felt safe.
‘It’s good to be home,’ I said.
29
All talk of Snowdonia was put on hold. Jack knew exactly where our next destination needed to be. After stopping in to say a quick goodbye to Laurel, Andy and the kids, the following morning found us on the road again, heading for the picture-postcard beauty of Wastwater.
‘Does she know you’re coming?’ Jack asked as we hurtled towards the Lakes.
‘No. I don’t want her to think something’s up.’
‘But something is up.’
‘She’ll find that out when I get there.’ I frowned. ‘Why’re you slowing down?’
‘Just something I want to get a look at.’ He nodded to a nondescript field we were passing, lined with drystone wall. ‘There. Look familiar?’
‘Why, should it?’
He shook his head. ‘No romance in your souls, you Yorkshire girls. That’s where we first met. Remember? You were slumped against that bit of wall, sobbing your heart out?’
‘Oh yeah.’ I blinked at it. ‘God. Life’s changed a lot since then.’
‘And for me.’ He glanced at a road sign. ‘Another two hours and we’ll be there.’
Finally, we pulled up outside Aunty Julia’s little whitewashed cottage. I hadn’t seen it since the day of my doomed wedding.
‘I’ll wait in the van,’ Jack said. ‘Let you and your aunty talk. Come get me if you need me.’
‘Thanks.’ I patted my pocket, where I’d stored the copy of my birth certificate, and drew a deep breath. ‘Okay, here goes.’
He planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘Good luck, Kit.’
I rapped smartly on the front door, then waited for Aunty Julia to answer. It seemed to take her longer than usual.
I knew as soon as she opened it that news had been spreading. She looked anxious, and that increased tenfold when she saw it was me. She’d been talking to Mum.
‘Kitty. You’re here.’
‘Well spotted,’ I said, summoning a watery smile.
‘How’s your head, dear?’
‘Much better, thanks. Can I come in?’
She hesitated, and for a minute I thought she was going to say no.
‘Of course,’ she said at last. ‘I was just making some lunch.’
Inside, I took a seat on the comfy chair. Aunty Julia wheeled herself into the open-plan kitchen and started bustling away with her back to me, fretfully clearing up crockery in a jitter of nervous energy.
‘Did I tell you about Robin down the road?’ she asked, speaking very fast, then went on without waiting for an answer. ‘He’s finally marrying her, the live-in one – well, not before time. Oh, and Pat’s back on the bottle, I heard – I mean, literally, straight from the bottle, Donald saw her. Carrie’s expecting another; this’ll be the fourth baby in five years, I think she’s starting to feel it now—’
I held up a hand to halt the barrage of gossip. ‘Okay, stop. I didn’t drive over for the monthly newsletter of the Wasdale Curtain Twitchers’ Society.’ I beckoned her over. ‘Come here, please.’
‘Just a moment, dear.’ She was still faffing with a pile of plates on the draining board.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Would you like some strawberries, Kitty? I just rinsed them for lunch.’
I gave in. ‘Okay. If you need me to have strawberries before we can have a conversation, then yes, I’ll have strawberries.’
I watched her as she took a couple of bowls and started dividing up a punnet of strawberries between them, counting them out with childlike precision. One for me, one for her. One for me, one for her. There were an odd number, so she sliced the last one precisely in half.
‘You can have the big half,’ she said, though to me the two halves looked identical.
‘Are you done?’
She sighed. ‘I suppose I am.’
She wheeled herself back to me and handed over my bowl of strawberries. ‘Sweet and plump, just like me,’ she said with a shy smile. ‘They were your favourite, back when I used to make our picnics. Your dad’s too.’
‘Which dad’s?’
She flushed. ‘So it’s true. You do know.’
I fished in my pocket for the birth certificate and handed it to her. She stared at it for a good minute. Eventually, I heard her let out a little sob.
‘I wasn’t a mum for very long,’ she whispered. ‘But when I see my name there, it’s still powerful.’
I stretched an arm around her and rested my crown against hers.
‘Why?’ I said quietly.
‘How could I keep you? I couldn’t walk, Kitty.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Lots of people who can’t walk are mums.’
‘It mattered when he was alive,’ she muttered darkly.
‘Uncle Ken?’
She nodded slightly. ‘I couldn’t bring a baby into that. Couldn’t bear the thought of him hurting you and me not being able to stop it. When I think of what he did to me…’ Her voice broke in a sob. ‘No, Kitty. No.’
‘Did he know?’
‘Of course he didn’t. He never even knew I was pregnant. I went to stay with your nana until it was all over.’ She let out a hard laugh. ‘Oh, he didn’t like that, letting me get away from him. It was the one time I stood up to him.’
‘Nana knew?’
‘Yes, dear. I did worry, when she got poorly, that she might let it slip one day. But whatever else she forgot, I think she always remembered what she’d promised me the day you were born.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You were a beautiful baby, Kitty. It broke my heart to give you up.’
I blinked back a tear.
‘Where did Ken think you were?’ I asked.
‘I told him I’d been referred to a special treatment centre for a course of muscle therapy. I don’t know if he ever believed me, but I wouldn’t come home, and I wouldn’t let him see me. Not until I’d handed you safely to Grant and Petra.’
‘Dad never told me…’ I muttered, half to myself.
‘I made him promise, just like your nana. I couldn’t bear for Ken to find out you were his.’ Her brow lowered. ‘No child should have to live with that sort of abuse.’
And yet I had lived with abuse, of a different kind. The emotional abuse I now recognised my mum had subjected me to for years. A handy training course to get me ready for Ethan to do exactly the same thing.
‘I knew Grant would take care of you,’ Aunty Julia said. ‘Give you a good life. The kind of stable, loving home I wanted my baby to have.’
‘But my mum…’
‘Yes, dear?’
Her eyes were wet through. She’d taken my hand and was gripping it hard, her thumb brushing fervently over the fingers. Just like Mum used to do when I was upset – my other mum, I mean.
‘Nothing,’ I said at last. ‘We’ve had a bit of a row, that’s all.’
‘She didn’t say anything. Was it about me?’
‘No. About Ethan.’
‘Do you need me to talk to her?’
‘You can talk to her if you like. I won’t be. Not for a long time – ever, I think.’
She looked concerned. ‘What was so bad, dear?’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s done with now.’ I lifted her chin and kissed her forehead. ‘Come on. Let’s take our strawberries and go eat them by the lake. I’ll get Jack and the dogs. I’d like you to get to know them better before we go again.’
‘That sounds nice.’ She put a hand on my arm to stop me standing. ‘Who is Jack, Kitty?’
‘He’s my… friend. My friend that I live with.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘Yes,’ I said simply. There didn’t seem much point skirting around it. ‘I love him very much.’
‘And he loves you?’
‘I don’t know. He lost his wife, and now he… I’m not sure how he feels about me. He’s fond of me, certainly. And he wants me with him.’
‘Be careful, won’t you?’
‘I will.’
‘You know you’ll always have a home here, if you ever need one.’ She flushed. ‘With your mother. If you want to think of me that way.’
‘Thank you. I do want to think of you that way.’ I flung my arms around her. ‘Maybe I always did.’
30
Snowdonia was tempting, but I didn’t want to go too far from Aunty Julia just yet. There was a sweetness to having a mum who genuinely loved me and wanted to spend time with me, not in a controlling way but as one adult to another. She seemed to feel it too: that things were different for us now. Better.
And I loved watching her get to know Jack. When I’d met Jack’s parents in Scotland, I’d been at least a little envious of that easy affection, how they laughed together. Now, for the first time in my life, it felt like I had that too. He smiled at how smug I’d started to get, showing off my new mum to him.
We stayed a week in Wastwater, then drove to Buttermere, a couple of hours away, where we could still pop back for occasional visits to Aunty – to my mum.
The days passed quickly in the camper with Jack, and yet they seemed endless, like school holidays when you’re a kid. Every day we spent in the Lakes we discovered new places together, and every night he stretched himself out next to me, naked and beautiful, and wrapped me up in his arms.
I’d never been to Buttermere before, but I discovered it was more than a match for Wastwater in the breathtaking beauty stakes. Jack sought us out a pitch in a farmer friend’s back field, where the mighty shadows of Haystacks and Fleetwith Pike muted the camper’s sunny glow. I soon got used to him waking me in the early morning when the sky was clear, so that together we could watch the dawn mists cascading like downy hair over the felltops and the pines.
After a recuperation period for my head to heal fully, I dived right back into my PA work. It was so varied, I rarely got bored. And Jack’s fan mail was always fun.
‘This is weird,’ I said one morning out in the awning, blinking at a picture in sickly green felt tip. ‘Looks like someone drew you a courgette.’
‘Pass it here,’ he said, putting down his sketchbook. I handed it over.
He laughed. ‘It’s not a courgette. Look.’ He held it up and pointed to what looked like a lumpy green sausage. ‘It’s Hulk, see? That little girl Isla from the book signing did it for me, her name’s on the back.’
I squinted at it. Now I examined it more closely, I did detect a hint of purple that could be Hulk’s super-stretchy trousers.
‘Aww,’ I said, smiling. ‘Sweet kid. You going to stick it on the fridge?’
‘No, I’ll send it to Di, she keeps them in a scrapbook for me. I like to look through it sometimes when I go down to her offices in London. Reminds me why I do it.’
He folded the little picture and placed it carefully back in its envelope, then started fanning himself with it.
I opened the next letter, which was in an official-looking envelope and addressed to me.
‘What is it?’ Jack asked in a low voice. We’d both come to regard anything in a pre-printed envelope as potentially scary.
I smiled. ‘Something good. The paperwork to have my marriage to Ethan declared voidable.’
‘Then you can have it annulled?’
‘That’s my understanding, yeah. And then legally speaking it’s like the whole thing never happened. Like it never should’ve.’
‘Will he contest it, do you think?’
‘Not sure how he could. He can hardly claim it was consummated, given I took off the same day.’
I put the forms to one side to fill in later.
‘Aww,’ I said with a little simper when I opened the next one. ‘Look, Jack. From Ben.’
I held up the photo of a little group of farm dogs, blinking in a puzzled way at the camera.
Jack smiled. ‘All grown up. Look well, don’t they?’
‘And happy.’ I turned it round to examine the puppies – well, dogs now, really. I recognised the artist formerly known as Honeybadger, now renamed Bruce according to the names scrawled on the back, sitting proudly upright at the head of his siblings. ‘Looks like our naughtiest pup’s grown up into a bit of a swot. Ben must’ve worked hard on their training.’
‘Who’s the bruiser in the middle?’ Jack asked.
I turned the photo round to look at the names. ‘Meg, it says. That must be Princess Sparkle.’
‘Yeesh. I pity the rat who gets on the wrong side of her.’
The next letter in the pile wasn’t a letter at all. It was a big, fat parcel.
‘Um… wow,’ I said when I’d opened it.
‘Ouch,’ Jack said, wincing. ‘From Sonia?’
‘Who else?’
I scanned the matching dog jackets in a granny-square patchwork of rainbow colours, the names ‘Sandi’ and ‘Mutli’ embroidered onto the sides.
‘Her spelling’s a bit off,’ I said.
Jack smiled. ‘Ah well, it’s sweet of her. Although woolly coats are the last thing they need today.’
It was bloody hot for September. Reeking hot. Hotter than Beelzebub’s boxers, as my ever-classy dad used to say. He had that touch of the poet about him. Sandy, curled by my feet with her tongue lolling, let out a throaty whine to let me know her views on the matter.
‘It’s like a furnace in here,’ Jack said, still fanning himself with Isla’s picture. ‘I’m sweating like a pig in a sauna.’
‘Sexy.’
‘As always.’ He got to his feet. ‘Right, ladies both human and canine, we’re off out. Some of us are on deadline and I’m refusing to write the day off, Indian summer or not. I can’t work in this heat.’
‘Off where?’ I said. ‘It won’t be any better outside – it’s twenty-four degrees in the shade. And there’ll be midges everywhere.’
‘It’ll be cool enough on high ground. Grab your walking boots, Kit: we’re going hiking.’
*
I stared up at the intimidating ridge of Fleetwith Pike. Blinked. Stared again.
Nope. It wasn’t getting any smaller.
‘And you said it was how high?’ I asked Jack, mesmerised by the swimming patchwork of gold on the mountain’s flank.
‘Around 2000 feet. Just a baby compared to some of the fells round here. It’s a good thousand feet shorter than Scafell Pike.’
‘Jesus.’ I ran my eyes up the steep sides to the summit. ‘If that’s a baby, I’d hate to see the parents.’
‘Oh, it’s not so bad.’ He gave my bum a pat. ‘Pair of sturdy northern legs on you, you’ll be skipping up. Come on.’
I groaned as we followed the frisking dogs to the foot of the fell. I could already feel my calves aching in anticipation of the climb that lay ahead. Still, at least we’d be nice and cool at the top.
*
It wasn’t worth it. It so wasn’t worth it. After two hours’ walking, I’d decided no heatwave could be worse than the pain burning through every muscle and joint. I felt like I’d been meat-tenderised with a mace.
‘Best… date… ever,’ I panted to Jack as we scrambled up jagged rock towards the summit.
‘I know. The look on your little face,’ Jack said, grinning at me over his shoulder.
‘You are so not getting laid tonight.’
‘Those shining eyes, full of joy and wonder…’
‘They’re shining because I’m crying inside. Also, outside.’
‘Oh, whisht, moany. It’ll be worth it when we get to the top.’
And he was right, as bloody usual. When I’d collapsed, exhausted, next to the cairn that marked the highest point, I had leisure to catch my breath and absorb the view we’d walked all the way up here for. In the distance, the twin pools of Buttermere and Crummock Water shimmered luscious watermelon-green under a heat haze. The fresh, grass-clad flank of the pike itself sloped lazily down to meet them, giving me a real sense of achievement when I reflected on how far and how high we’d walked.
And it was cool: so deliciously, blissfully, sexily cool. I gulped in a deep breath of mountain air and exhaled slowly.
‘Told you,’ Jack said.
‘All right, don’t get smug,’ I said, smiling. ‘So are you going to do some work now?’
‘Not on the summit.’ He skimmed his gaze over a gaggle of fellow walkers tucking into their packed lunches. ‘Come on, English. We’ll find somewhere further down where it’s quiet.’
In a sheltered nook overlooking an old slate quarry, we each picked a spot that suited us. Jack selected a flat rock where he could work undisturbed and the dogs, tired after their walk, settled down by his feet.
That looked like a good idea. Taking my cue from them, I spread myself out next to Jack for a good old laze. The press release about Tilly and Billy in a Hot Air Balloon I’d been planning to write could wait until my muscles had recovered a bit.
