Caroline Anderson - Mother of the Bride

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, darling. Sorry. Of course you’re having it there,’ she agreed, squashing the regret that she wouldn’t be married here, in Cambridge, from the home where she’d grown up. But that was unrealistic, and she was sensible enough to recognise that now. ‘Where else, when you’ve got such a lovely setting? But—only ten and a half weeks?’ she said, her voice perilously close to a squeak of dismay as she thought of the reasons that might exist for their haste. ‘Don’t you need longer to plan it?’ she hedged.

The lovely ripple of her daughter’s laughter made Maisie want to cry again. ‘Oh, it’s all planned! We’re having the wedding here in the church, of course, and the hotel in the village can do the catering. They’ve got a brilliant restaurant, so the food will be great. And we’ll have a marquee on the lawn and if it rains there’s plenty of room inside, and we can have a ceilidh in the ballroom— it’ll be wonderful! But you have to come now, because I need a dress and I’ve only got a week and a bit before I have to go back to uni, and you have to help me choose it. And we have to look for something for you, too—you’ll need something really lovely, and I want to be there when you choose it. I need you, Mum. Say you’ll come.’

Her voice had dropped, sounding suddenly hesitant, and Maisie knew she had no choice. Wanted no choice. This was her baby, her only child, and she was getting married, whether Maisie liked it or not.

‘Of course I’ll come,’ she said, squashing down her apprehension and concentrating on being positive. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

‘Great. I can’t wait, it’s going to be such fun! Look, I have to go, we’ve got to tell Alec’s parents before they go to bed, but I’ll hand you over to Dad. He wants to talk to you.’

Oh, lord. Not now. Please, not now, not again. She needed to crawl under the covers and have a really good howl, and the last thing she needed to do was make small talk with the man who still held her heart in the palm of his hand.

‘She wants me to come up,’ she told him, sticking firmly to business.

‘Yes. It needs to be soon, so I hope you aren’t too busy. When are you free?’

Never. Not to go there, to the chilly, forbidding castle, with his mother still there despising her and him indifferent to her feelings, doing what was right instead of what mattered and riding roughshod over her heart. Except apparently he wasn’t indifferent to her feelings any more. Maybe he’d grown up. Twenty years could do that to you.

‘It’s not too bad for the next couple of weeks. I interviewed someone today for a feature that I have to write up, and I’m doing a wedding tomorrow—’

‘Can’t you hand it over to someone?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Not this one.’

‘Why not? Surely some other photographer.’

She sucked in a breath, stunned that he could dismiss her so easily, implying that any photographer could do the job as well, as if it was just a case of pressing the right button at the right time. So much for him not being indifferent to her feelings!

‘I don’t think you quite understand the process,’ she said drily, hanging onto her temper. ‘Quite apart from the fact that they want me,not some other photographer,’ she told him, ‘you have to understand that brides are very emotional and there’s no way I’d let her down at this point. I gave them my word—to quote you. And you have to respect that.’

There was a heartbeat of silence, then a quiet sigh. ‘All right. So you have to do the wedding. What time will you be through?’

‘Five? Maybe six, at the latest. It’s in Cambridge, so it’s local.’

‘So—if you get the seven-fifteen from Cambridge to King’s Cross tomorrow night, you can pick up the Deerstalker from Euston that gets to Fort William at ten the next morning. Will that be OK?’

The overnight sleeper? It would cost an arm and a leg—but she’d do it, for Jenni. ‘Yes, I’ll book it.’

‘I’ve done it. I’m doing it on line now. I’ll have the tickets waiting for you at the station to collect, and I’ll pick you up in Fort William the day after tomorrow. And, Maisie?’ he added, his voice dropping.

‘Yes?’

‘I know this is going to be difficult for you. It’ll be difficult for me, too, but we have to do this for Jenni.’

‘Of course we do,’ she said wearily. ‘And it’ll be fine. I just wish I felt they were doing the right thing.’

‘It is the right thing. It’ll be all right, Maisie. You’ll see.’

Those words again, echoing back at her over the years, reminding her of just how frail a thing love could be under pressure. She hoped he was right—heavens, how she hoped it, but she wouldn’t bank on it. They were so young, so eager, so unaware of all the pain.

‘I’ll see you at ten on Thursday,’ she said, and switched the phone off.

Thursday morning. Only—she glanced at her watch—thirty-six hours away. No time at all to shore up her defences and get her armour plating up and running.

She’d need days—

Ridiculous. She hadn’t done it in twenty years, what made her think a few more days could make any difference?

She got off the bed—the very bed where he’d loved her so tenderly, so sweetly, so patiently. So skilfully. She stroked the quilt smooth, her mind back in the long-ago days when love had been sweet and laughter had been the order of the day.

She’d been about to start her degree here at the local college—not as prestigious as one of the Cambridge University colleges, of course, but it offered a good degree in journalism—and she had needed accommodation. Cheap accommodation. And Rob, who had just graduated with flying colours from one of the Cambridge colleges, had been looking for someone to share his house. He was off to serve in the Royal Navy, a six-year commission, and he needed a care taker, all running expenses paid in return for maintaining the house in good condition in his absence.

Only one proviso—she had to live in it alone and share it with him occasionally when he was on shore leave, but that suited her fine, because it was the only way she could afford it and it meant she could get away from home, from a repressive father who didn’t think she needed to go away to college.

So she’d arranged to view it, and they’d gone out for a drink to discuss the fine detail. Well, that had been the excuse. In fact, they’d just wanted to spend time together, and over the next few days they’d fallen headlong in love. Just a week after they’d met, she’d ended up here in this room, in this bed, giving him her heart.

He still had it. He always would.

She sighed and turned her back on the bed. She wanted nothing more than to crawl under the quilt and cry her eyes out, but she had a feature to write up before tomorrow, clothes to pack for her trip, a wedding to prepare for—and besides, she was all done crying over Robert Mackenzie. She’d worn that particular T-shirt out long ago, and she wasn’t going there again.

‘How do you think she took it?’

Badly. Especially when he’d implied that another photographer could step into her shoes at a moment’s notice. He’d have to do better than that, Rob thought ruefully.

He smiled at his daughter—his beautiful, clever, radiantly happy daughter—and lied. ‘She’s fine,’ he told her. ‘I’ve booked her train ticket, and I’ll pick her up—’

‘Let me—please? Give me time with her, so I can talk her down a little. She’ll be nervous.’

Nervous? Would she? Quite possibly, he conceded. ‘She might not be very thrilled about it, but she’s got nothing to be nervous about,’ he said, trying to reassure their daughter.

But Jenni looked at him, wise beyond her years, and shook her head. ‘Of course she has. She hated it here. She hasn’t been here for twenty years and she’ll be unsure of her welcome.’

‘But—that’s silly! She’s your mother! Of course she’s welcome,’ he said, but then he thought about it, about the defensive tone of her voice, about how much she’d seemed to hate it here, and he sighed softly.

‘I’ll still pick her up. Even more reason. I can talk to her.’

Jenni chewed her lip. ‘Dad—she won’t want to talk to you. She goes out of her way to be out if you’re coming to the house, she won’t even look at you—what if she refuses to get in the car?’

‘She won’t refuse,’ he said, wishing he was as certain as he sounded. ‘She’s not that fond of walking.’

Jenni gave a splutter of laughter and came over and hugged him, slapping him on the chest simultaneously. ‘That was mean. You be kind to her or she’ll end up in the hotel in the village, I know she will.’

‘I’ll be kind to her, Jenni,’ he promised, serious now. ‘I was always kind to her.’

‘Were you? She’s never really said anything very much about you, just that it didn’t work out.’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said, carefully keeping his voice neutral. ‘But don’t worry. We can do this. It’ll be fine, Jenni.’

‘Are you sure? You’ll probably fight like hell. I don’t think you know her. She seems like a pussy-cat, but she can be pretty feisty, you know.’

He laughed, but her words echoed in his head. Feisty? Oh, yes, she’d been feisty, but that wasn’t how he remembered her. He remembered her after their fights—sweet, tender, passionate— until the end. Then she’d just been withdrawn and uncommunicative, as if all the spark had gone out of her, and he hadn’t known how to get through to her. Jenni was right. He really didn’t know her, the woman who’d been his wife, who’d taken his heart and broken it into little pieces.

‘I’m sure we can be adult about it,’ he said, not at all convinced but hoping it was true.

Jenni tipped her head on one side. ‘Why did neither of you ever get married again? I mean, I know why you didn’t stay married to each other, it’s not rocket science, but why didn’t you marry anyone else? It’s not as if you’re hideous, either of you, and you’re both so nice.’

He shrugged, not intending to drag his wounds out into the open for his daughter to pick the scabs off. ‘Never got round to it, I suppose,’ he said casually. ‘First I was in the navy, and then I was juggling establishing my business in London and being a father to you, and then my own father died and I had to move up here and take over the estate. And it’s hard to meet anyone when you’re up here in the backwaters, especially if you work in an almost exclusively male environment. Bear in mind that the majority of women who come to the estate are partners of men who come for the sport. They aren’t looking for a husband.’

‘Are you sure? Maybe they want to switch husbands? And anyway, that’s rubbish. It’s never hard to meet people when you’re rich, it’s just hard to meet the right people,’ she said drily, and he could tell from her tone that there was a wealth of hurt there. She’d encountered some gold- diggers at uni, men who’d only been interested in her for her inheritance, she’d told him, but Alec, fiercely protective, had been there for her through thick and thin, and he knew the young man loved his daughter from the bottom of his kind and generous heart.

If only they’d been so lucky, him and Maisie. If only they’d found a love like that. It might not be rocket science, but it was a mystery to him why they hadn’t got on. It had been so good at first, so special. Nothing had ever felt like it since, and that, of course, was why he’d never married again. Because to be married to anyone other than his Maisie would have been a travesty, a betrayal of everything he stood for.